Described through the eyes of teenager Roddie Gillies, Shean is a coal-mining town somewhere on the west coast of mid-20th-century Cape Breton when the Island was still a collection of relatively-isolated rural communities. This coming-of-age novel follows Roddie's Catholic schooldays, the development of his artistic talents with the encouragement of a nun, his adolescent capers and budding sexuality and summers spent at the race track..
Roddie lives with his grandfather, Calum Gillies, a Gaelic speaker and a carpenter who settled in Shean when the mines were booming. A quiet and stoic man, Calum and his aging friends illuminate the changing world around them: The loss of the mines, the strikes they endured, religious parochialism and a disappearing language. One of Calum's compatriots composes a poem in Gaelic commemorating miners passed. Assisted by Roddie and his friends, the men plant the poem--the 18 letters of the Gaelic alphabet corresponding to 18 different trees--an ill-fated forest of 400 trees to memorialize their disappearing life.

Frank Macdonald is the award-winning author of A Forest for Calum (CBU Press 2005) and A Possible Madness (CBU Press 2011), both long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and both finalists for an Atlantic Book Award. A long-time and award-winning columnist, Macdonald is also an accomplished writer of short stories, drama, poetry and songs. His humorous, often satirical columns in the Inverness Oran have twice been anthologized; Assuming I’m Right in 1990 became a stage production that has toured Nova Scotia and elsewhere in Canada. His play Her Wake won Best Canadian Play at the Liverpool International Theatre Festival in 2010 and, also in 2010, he authored T.R.’s Adventure at Angus the Wheeler’s (CBU Press), a children's book, illustrated by Virginia McCoy. Frank lives in Inverness, Cape Breton. A new novel, Tinker and Blue is due for publication in the fall of 2014.

Frank Macdonald's profile page