Cape Breton Road - D R Macdonald

It's a long and winding road out of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and many of its inhabitants never really get away, held by ties of memory and blood. Innis Corbett, finds himself back there, aged nineteen, deported from Boston to the isolated Gaelic-speaking community where he was born. A joy-rider turned car thief, with no money , no wheels and only a handful of marijuana seeds with which to make his fortune in a hostile environment, he takes refuge with his bachelor uncle, a roustabout with a taste for drink and an eye for pretty women. In this strange, harsh landscape which has shaped his family and which both absorbs and challenges him, Innis is forced to work out who he is. His plan to escape and head west is foiled by his uncle's vigilance - and the weather. Caught in a three-cornered relationship with the woman who comes to live with his uncle, and tempted by a sexy black Cadillac, the discovery of his secret pot plantation is not all Innis has to fear. With terrible inevitability, he is pushed towards a deed that would violate his connection to the land and the Highland culture he came out of. This is an exceptional debut by a writer with an unerring eye for landscape and tragedy that is bred in the bone.