At nineteen, Innis Corbett is transplanted from his home near Boston and suddenly finds himself back in the remote Cape Breton community where he was born, the reluctant and unwelcome guest of his uncle Starr. Innis had developed an addiction for stealing expensive cars (not for money but for pleasure) and for the marijuana he helps his best friend to sell. When bad habits catch up with him, he is deported to Canada, a punishment worse than prison. Innis is unimpressed by his uncle, who gave up his dreams of leaving the island to repair televisions, chase women, drive a Lada and grow nostalgic on rum. Desperate to get away, Innis hatches the only escape plan he can, and starts to grow a secret cash crop of marijuana and looks for a car to steal. He bides his time smoking pot and doing whatever odd jobs he has to, full of unnamed need and pent-up anger. When Starr’s current girlfriend, an attractive woman in her late thirties, comes to stay while fleeing another relationship, Innis’ deep sense of longing fixes on her. He feels fierce desire, but also something he recognises as good and true. Starr cautions him, and a bitter jealous rivalry begins to rage between them, violence lying just under the surface. As summer arrives, Innis’ suffocation and the tension between the two men are palpable. Though life in this small community bound by memory and blood cannot cure Innis immediately of his anger, the rugged landscape does work a change on him. He takes on the challenge of the wild and harsh north woods where a man can get lost, learns the names of plants and wildlife, sketches and studies the natural world, and diligently cares for his illegal seedlings. As he grows stronger, he faces himself in the mirror and feels an emerging sense of self-worth and coming manhood. He realises he is learning an enjoyment of hard work and its rewards, although his crop might be less worthy than those of his predecessors. Affectionately sheltering the plants from bad weather and hungry deer, he muses, “Was there a Gaelic word for pot?” Cape Breton has spawned a wealth of contemporary literature, from Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Fall On Your Knees to Alistair MacLeod’s No Great Mischief and Lynn Coady’s Strange Heaven. The region’s rugged landscapes, rural life and distinctive Gaelic traditions converging with modern social pressures have captured the attention of readers internationally; as they have in the work of other Atlantic Canada authors such as Michael Crummey, Wayne Johnston and David Adams Richards. MacDonald set his novel in the 1970s, when a country area of Cape Breton could still be a truly isolated backwater, the phone service on a party-line system and listening-in a regular pastime. “I needed to create a world that was much more cut off, where it would seem like exile to Innis and where he could never be alone or anonymous.” Innis recalls his parents’ fights about “down home”, how they would one day love it to tears and the next day complain how it had held them back. Much as he wants to get off the Cape Breton Road, it may be that all the emotions that make life worth living — “love and anger and disappointment and hope” — lead back to the island. Cape Breton Road is a compelling coming-of-age story raw with beauty and emotion.

This is the story of Innis Corbett, a young man born in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, into a Highlander community whose inhabitants are held by ties of memory and blood. As a child Innis went with his parents to live in Boston. After his father was killed in a car accident, Innis was raised by his mother, a woman with a weakness for men and drink. When Innis gets into trouble over a series of car thefts, he is deported back to Canada, a fate worse than prison, in his eyes. Innis ends up living with his Uncle Starr amidst the harshly beautiful landscape that has shaped his family and that both absorbs and challenges him. He takes refuge in the wild, dense woods, where he devises a plan to grow marijuana. This venture relieves his loneliness and gives him something to care for, a secret of his own. Then Claire, an attractive former flight attendant nearing 40, enters the Starr household. So begins an entanglement that leads to suspicion, jealousy, and ultimately to violence. Cape Breton Road is an exceptional novel by a writer with an unerring eye for landscape and tragedy that is bred in the bone.

Biff and whiff, baker’s fog and lu’sknikn, pie social and milling frolic – these are just a few examples of the distinctive language of Cape Breton Island, where a puck is a forceful blow and a Cape Breton pork pie is filled with dates, not pork. The first regional dictionary devoted to the island’s linguistic and cultural history, the Dictionary of Cape Breton English is a fascinating record of the island’s rich vocabulary. Dictionary entries include supporting quotations culled from the editors’ extensive interviews with Cape Bretoners and considerable study of regional variation, as well as definitions, selected pronunciations, parts of speech, variant forms, related words, sources, and notes, giving the reader in-depth information on every aspect of Cape Breton culture. A substantial and long-awaited work of linguistic research that captures Cape Breton’s social, economic, and cultural life through the island’s language, the Dictionary of Cape Breton English can be read with interest by Backlanders, Bay byes, and those from away alike.