The Men’s Breakfast is built out of short stories by the likes of  Frank Macdonald, Bill Conall, Dave Doucette, D. C. Troicuk and more—plus remarkable novels-in-progress by Maureen Hull, Brian Tucker, and Stewart Donovan that stand alone. In a shocking scene that turns on a breath, Joyce Rankin trumpets the challenges to which a woman rises to protect her children, and Phonse Jessome pulls off the tough-guy bravado of the best of crime writing. Caplan found the most fragile magic delivered out of the hands of Russell Colman and Tim Vassallo, and then some remarkable brute force masterfully carved by Paul MacDougall and Victor Sakalauskas. Sharp wit and compassionate insight abound in this book, as The Men’s Breakfast flowers forth with the finest in human relationship: a hard-bitten father’s affection for his wayward son, a teenage youth caring for a dis-abled woman, a pack of kooky apartment-dwellers on a road trip to a funeral. As Caplan points out in a poignant introduction that explains the book’s title, “Some of these 19 writers have achieved a bit of fame, others will be happy discoveries—and all are worth reading in this entertaining and thought-provoking book that has been built to last, to be returned to, and to share.”

Ronald Caplan has served as interviewer and photographer for Cape Breton's Magazine for twenty-five years. He has received the Barbeau Award of the Folklore Studies Association of Canada, Nova Scotia's Cultural Life Award, the Canadian Historical Association's Award for exemplary contribution to the Oral History of Cape Breton and an honorary doctorate from Cape Breton University. His work is best known for keeping the Cape Breton story alive through oral testimony and images. Living at Wreck Cove on the Cabot Trail, Caplan is the author of several books and the publisher of Breton Books.

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