Sixteen spare, evocative masterworks: men and women acting out their own peculiar mortality against the unforgiving landscape of Cape Breton Island. Alistair MacLeod's reputation as one of Canada's most important writers has rested largely on the stories collected in this book. There stories are about death, family ties, and the pull of traditions transplanted from Scotland to the harsh New World. Joyce Carol Oates describes the experience of reading these stories: "that sudden feeling of insecurity that comes to a traveler in unmapped country a sense of immediacy, cinematic in its vividness."