In 1779, driven out of his home, Calum MacDonald sets sail from the Scottish Highlands with his extensive family. After a long, terrible journey -leaving Scotland a husband and a father he arrives in Canada a widower and a grandfather Calum settles his family in 'the land of trees' until they become a separate Nova Scotian clan: red-haired and black-eyed, with its own identity, its own history.
It is the 1980s by the time our narrator, Alexander MacDonald, tells the story of his family, a thrilling and passionate story that intersects with history: with Culloden, where the clans died, and with the 1759 battle at Quebec that was won when General Wolfe sent in the fierce Highlanders because it wa *no great mischief if they fall'.
Looking back from a diminished, Alexander blighted modern wo world, remembers the great stories of his people and their battle with the land and the endless Canadian winter: loggers, miners, drinkers, adventurers; men forever in exile, forever tied to their clan and a lived history.
Elegiac and haunting, rhapsodically beautiful, with each word laid like stone, this is a novel of lyrical and narrative power that will take its place among the great books of our time.
Hard cover
Gently used

Condition: Good