Twenty-Six

Leo McKay Jr.'s bestselling novel is set in a small Nova Scotia town, where a family is changed forever after a devastating mining accident claims the lives of twenty-six men. As the story shifts back and forth in time and between characters, we meet the men and women of the Burrows family: brothers Ziv and Arvel, drawn to the mine for different reasons; their father, a former union organizer; Ziv's ex-girlfriend, now living in Japan; and Arvel's wife, who hopes for a better life for herself in the city. In the aftermath of the explosion, and as the investigation into its causes unfolds, the members of the Burrows family are forced to confront each other and themselves bringing the novel to its moving and redemptive conclusion. Written in spare, hard-hitting prose, and inspired in part by the Westray mining disaster,Twenty-Sixis a novel of universal human struggle and understanding that evokes in all its drama and pathos a community transformed by tragedy. (FromMcClelland & Stewart)

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