Crow

Finished October 28

Crow by Amy Spurway

This novel is one that drew me in and had me caring about the various characters. Set in Cape Breton, Stacey (Crow) Fortune has returned home from Toronto to die. She's had a touch time lately, with her engagement broken off and then being diagnosed with inoperable brain tumours. She's starting to have trouble with her vision and has episodes of being very ill. 

She is hopeful to see her two best friends, but is aware that they've had a falling out and Allie no longer speaks to Char. Allie has recently had a loss of her own and is at a loose end, not handling it well. Char has recently returned home after a long absence, and is also having issues.

Crow has known all her life that her father was Alec Spenser, the only son of a wealthy family. Alec disappeared before she was born, presumed drowned in a boating accident. His family wants nothing to do with her, but Crow's mother Effie Fortune made a point of taking her to the family home at one point and makes no secret of her parentage. Crow had a bit of a wild time in her teens, having multiple short romances, and always returning to a secret lover, Willy, who was also a bit of an outcast. 

Besides her mother, she has numerous family members in the area, including her aunt Peggy and her uncle Mossy. 

As Crow finds purpose beyond her own impending demise, she becomes closer to the community she fled after high school, finding new friendships, and new connections with her family. She learns more about where she comes from, and the legacies that come to various family members. She reconnects with old friends and finds new depths to those friendships. 

This is a novel of coming home, of the importance of community, compassion, and connection, and of the nature of love. 

A fantastic read. 

Lauchlin of the Bad Heart

Finished August 22
Lauchlin of the Bad Heart by D.R. MacDonald

This novel, set in rural Cape Breton, has at its center middle-aged Lauchlin MacLean. Lauchlin was near the beginning of a promising boxing career when his heart condition forced him to step back. He taught school for a while, but didn't enjoy it, and moved home to help manage the store his father started and his mother ran after his father's death.
Lauchlin had started a relationship with a local girl, Morag, when they were both young, that never really progressed despite their strong attraction and Morag's interest in more.
Lauchlin seems a man caught in limbo, reliving his past in his head while keeping in shape using the bag hanging in the back room of the store, having a series of casual relationships that never lead to anything permanent.
His older brother Frank, a doctor, has a yearning to travel back to Ireland to look for family roots and wants Lauchlin to go with him, but Lauchlin is reluctant to leave for reasons he can't clearly articulate. One of Lauchlin's friends, Clement MacTavish, married recently and his wife Tena went blind soon after. She is an independent spirit who isn't willing to sit at home and as she ventures out, she and Lauchlin begin a friendship.
This book shows us the history of the area, with the mountain homes gradually disappearing as the older generation died off, We see Lauchlin's relationship to that history, with his own family, and his neighbours. And we see the newcomers who bring new ideas, new needs and new issues. A novel of issues of the heart in numerous ways.

Anna from Away

Finished January 28
Anna from Away by D.R. MacDonald

This novel is set in Cape Breton near the end of the 20th century. Anna has come to Cape Breton from California as her marriage is ending. Her husband Chet has found a younger woman that he has chosen over her. Anne is an artist and was attracted to Cape Breton by tales of the quality of its light, and by the photos of the house she has rented for the year. She arrives in late February, and adjusts quickly to the unexpected remoteness of the house, and to the weather. She walks every day, not letting the weather restrict her, and finds herself combing the edge of the water for items that have washed ashore. She draws the objects and other items from nature and makes metal sculptures.
Her nearest neighbour is Murdock, a man about 15 years older than her who is mourning the woman he loved who has recently died. Murdock is just beginning to emerge from his grief and finds himself drawn to Anna. Also nearby is a young vibrant woman Breagh who is starting her own clothing store "down north" with a friend, and who is a single mom to her young daughter. She has a sometime boyfriend, Livingstone, who is a man intent on his own needs and desires and loyal to no one.
Anna, and her neighbours along the coast have been told by the RCMP to watch for suspicious activity as there are suspected drug runners along the coast, and when a bale of marijuana washes up on Anna's beach, her reaction to it, and her involvement of Murdock, lead to a new story.
An interesting story, with a real sense of place. Anna is a woman between lives here and this experience at Cape Breton is a interlude in her life. But the others live here all the time and it is she who is an interruption to their lives.

More Canadian Fiction

Finished March 30
Where White Horses Gallop by Beatrice MacNeil
This is another wonderful Atlantic Canadian novel. It follows four friends from Cape Breton, along with their families, through the Second World War. Three of the young man enlist and after training in both Canada and Britain eventually make it to the front line. The fourth young man is already dealing badly with the trauma in his life and chooses a life at home. We see the parents of these young men and their feelings around the war and their sons' roles in it. We are invited into the thoughts of many of the characters as they try to understand what they are feeling and articulate it, if only to themselves. We also see the community of this small Cape Breton village and how the members interact and relate to the larger world.
I wept through portions of this book (so keep a tissue handy), and laughed through others. MacNeil includes a poem written by one of the Cape Breton Highlanders at the end that adds its voice to her story. This is a tale of both deeds and thoughts and adds to my list of great Canadian fiction.

Latest reading

Finished Feb 18th
Causeway: A Passage from Innocence by Linden MacIntyre
This memoir of boyhood years in Cape Breton by the cohost of CBC's fifth estate is a strong story of a boy's relationship with his father and his community. Linden was a boy always interested in the world, both the world of the adults in his own community and the world beyond Cape Breton. He became friendly with a Hungarian man, Old John, who ran the temporary camp for the causeway workers, and with a young Korean engineer, Ted. He listened to the conversations around him, and made his own sense of them. He gives his impressions of his father and the life his father had to live to support the family. His book includes references to the idea of home and the roots that we all have. As someone who grew up moving often and without a real sense of a physical place as home, I can relate to his comments on this.

Finished Feb 16th
Undercurrent by Anne Metikosh
A mystery set in Northern Ontario with the main character Charlie Meikle, a conservation officer, suspicious about the circumstances surrounding the death of a friend of hers. The story travels to Toronto and back again, and includes bear poaching, environmental damage, abandoned mines and alcohol. Charlie, despite being a woman, is not to be taken lightly and she involves others in the story as her suspicions grow.