From a gifted storyteller and one of Canada’s most respected journalists, The Long Stretch is a saga of love and war, the story of those who have "gone away" and those who are compelled to stay. In one apocalyptic night, John Gillis and his estranged cousin Sextus confront a half century of half-truths and suppositions that have shaped and scarred their lives, their families and their insular Cape Breton community. Telling stories that unravel a host of secrets, they begin to realize that they were damaged before they were born, their fathers and a close friend forming an unholy trilogy in a tragic moment of war. Among the roots of a complex and painful relationship, they uncover the truth of a fateful day John has spent 20 years trying to forget. Taut and brilliantly paced, etched with quiet humour and crafted with fiery dialogue, The Long Stretch is a mesmerizing novel in the tradition of Alistair MacLeod, David Adams Richards and Ann-Marie MacDonald.

LINDEN MACINTYRE was the host of Canada’s premiere investigative television show, the fifth estate, for nearly twenty-five years. Born in St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, and raised in Port Hastings, Cape Breton, he began his career in 1964 with the Halifax Chronicle-Herald as a parliamentary bureau reporter. MacIntyre later worked at The Journal and hosted CBC Radio’s Sunday Morning before joining the fifth estate. His work on that show garnered an International Emmy, and he has won ten Gemini Awards.

His bestselling first novel, The Long Stretch, was nominated for a CBA Libris Award, while his boyhood memoir, Causeway: A Passage from Innocence, was a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2006 and won both the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award. His second novel, The Bishop’s Man, was a #1 national bestseller and the winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction and the CBA Libris Fiction Book of the Year Award. His other novels include Why Men Lie, Punishment and The Only Café. MacIntyre lives in Toronto with his wife, CBC radio host and author Carol Off. They spend their summers in a Cape Breton village by the sea.

Linden MacIntyre's profile page

• CBA Libris Award for Non-Fiction

“[A] stylistically assured and mature first novel.” — Toronto Star

“MacIntyre conveys the language and the landscape of Cape Breton very effectively. . . . Evokes the complex relations that can draw families together and yet slowly drive them apart.” — Quill & Quire

“I can’t tell you enough how much I absolutely love this book. . . . If you live in Cape Breton or Newfoundland, you’re going to love this book. . . . I did not want to put it down.” — Candy Palmater, The Candy Show