A Forest for Calum

by Frank Macdonald • 416 pages

A DEEPLY TOUCHING and laugh-out-loud novel by this Inverness Oran journalist.
    A rural coal-mining town on the coast of Cape Breton is the setting for young Roddie Gillies' Catholic schooldays, artistic talents, adolescent capers, and budding sexuality. Roddie lives with his grandfather, a Gaelic speaker and carpenter who settled in Shean when the mines were booming. Seasoned with humour, here is a portrait of powerful community, religious parochialism, declining industry, and a disappearing language.
    Nominated for the 2007 IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD!