Wake of the Aspy — A Novel of Northern Cape Breton

by Stewart Donovan • 184 pages

THE COASTAL STEAMER Aspy connected northern Cape Breton to the world. It was a lifeline, an escape route, and a threat to the old ways.
    Rooted in a woman’s hardwon independence, Donovan’s terrific, often hilarious storytelling—with the sounds and rhythm and acid wit of daily life—faces with vitality the local life and its encounters with government and a tourism future. Despite expropriations, war, cutbacks, and social injustice aimed at driving them out, these are survivors you still might be lucky enough to meet Down North.
    “These all add up, rather brilliantly, to form a moving portrait of the Doyle clan and the community, in a book that’s hard to put down.”—Carol Bruneau, Chronicle Herald