The lost salt gift of blood
First sentence
There are times even now when I awake at four o'clock in the morning with the terrible fear that I have overslept, when I imagine that my father is waiting for me in the room below the darkened stairs or that the shorebound men are tossing pebbles against my window while blowing their hands and stomping their feet impatiently on the frozen steadfast earth...
Description
This collection of 11 stories, set for the most part in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, uses detailed description of the stark, beautiful landscape and the lives of fishermen, farmers, miners, and lighthouse keepers to convey a powerful range of feelings. A Canadian writer not well known in the United States, MacLeod draws on childhood memories and on folktales of Ireland and Scotland, often writing in the first person and using Gaelic quotations to enhance the melancholy moods. A special blending of myth and reality here preserves impressions from a time and place that will never exist again.