Margaret McNeil has lost a father and a brother to the coal mines of Cape Breton. Her grandfather's as good as gone with the black lung, and her mother carries so much bitterness she might as well be buried alongside the lot of them.

In this powerful love story set against the darkness and disasters of mining life, Margaret MacNeil tells the joyful, heart-scalding story of her hard-handed family and her rebellious love for Neil Currie, a miner by trade and a bagpiper for the joy of it.

The Glace Bay Miners' Museum has been adapted both for stage and for film. The film adaptation, released in 1996 as Margaret's Museum, starring Helena Bonham Carter, Clive Russel, and Kate Nelligan, won critical acclaim and a fistful of awards, including a "two thumbs up" from Siskel and Ebert.

Born in Reserve Mines, Cape Breton, Sheldon Currie is professor emeritus at St. Francis Xavier University and author of short stories, novels, and plays. Probably his most widely known work is The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum, which was also adapted for radio and stage plays, and made into the critically acclaimed film Margaret’s Museum, starring Helena Bonham Carter. In his varied career, Sheldon has also served in the RAF and as fiction editor of The Antigonish Review. His play Lauchie, Liza and Rory won the 2004 Merritt Award for best play by a Nova Scotia writer. Down the Coaltown Road, first published in 2002, was nominated for the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction.

Sheldon Currie's profile page

Another authentic Cape Breton voice, Mary Colin Chisholm narrates the story with humour and pathos. A frequent stage and television performer, Chisholm starred in the stage adaptation of The Glace Bay Miners' Museum.

Mary Colin Chisholm's profile page

"Mary Colin Chisholm is wonderful as Margaret . . . perfect for the character."

<i>AudioFile</i>

"The main narrative is, well, dead-on, complete with a deliciously Gothic ending even the masters might envy . . . both outrageously funny and deeply sad."

<i>Globe and Mail</i>