Innis Corbett, a young man born into a highlander community in Cape
Breton, Nova Scotia, left his native country as a child to live
with his parents in Boston. Emotionally troubled by his
father's death and his mother's weakness for men and
drinking, Innis gets involved in a series of car thefts and is
deported back to Canada which seems worse to him than going to
prison.
Living with bachelor Uncle Starr in rural Cape Breton, a harsh yet
beautiful place that has shaped his family and that absorbs and
challenges him, Innis takes refuge in the wild, dense woods where
he devises a plan to grow marijuana. This venture assuages his
loneliness, giving him something to care for, a secret of his own.
But, just as Innis is coming to terms with his situation, Claire,
an attractive former flight attendant nearing forty, enters the
Starr household and an entanglement begins that leads to suspicion,
jealousy, and ultimately to an unpredictable climax.
An exceptional first novel of literary suspense by a writer with an
unerring eye for landscape and tragedy bred in the bone.
