Redneck Press with Fried Chicken and Coffee

I'm tak­ing a break from a book review to write about another book. Funny, eh?

D.R Mac­Don­ald is a writer I don't hear much about, and that's too bad. His novel Cape Bre­ton Road is one I re-read fre­quently, for the lush descrip­tions and lean prose, yes, but more for the descrip­tions of Cape Bre­ton and the char­ac­ters who inhabit the lonely land­scape. Like many of my favorite books, it reminds me in ways of where I grew up in Penn­syl­va­nia, the way the woods can look at night as you walk them and lis­ten to the mag­i­cal noises you can hear when every­thing else is quiet.

Plot-wise, there's noth­ing ter­ri­bly com­plex going on. 19-year-old Innis is a native of Nova Sco­tia liv­ing in the United States who gets deported for a rash of car thefts he com­mits in Boston, where he and his mother live. In the com­pany of INS agents, he's escorted back to Cape Bre­ton to live with his bach­e­lor uncle. Need­less to say, the two don't get along, and Innis's only hope of get­ting out is the money he'll get from the pot he's planted far back in the woods on this uncle's farm. The meat of the story begins when his uncle's girl­friend Claire moves in and both men begin to com­pete for her affec­tions. The real strength of this book is in the prose style and the eccen­tric char­ac­ters Innis runs into, not least of whom is his uncle Starr.

There are also high­land Scots and whisky priests, sea cap­tains and tv repair­men, all revealed via prose that never seems hur­ried or less than com­plex. If the end­ing is less than sat­is­fy­ing for some read­ers, that's okay; it seems true to what I know of 19-year-old men.

D.R. MacDonald's also writ­ten a nifty col­lec­tion of sto­ries called Eye­stone, and another novel called Lauch­lin of the Bad Heart, which I have not read, but trust Mac­Don­ald well enough to get it.

You can read some of it via Google Books and look at reviews from the online book­sellers. Trust me and dis­re­gard the peo­ple who gave it ones or twos.