Strong, poignant, memorable prose. Some pieces, such as "The Boat" and the title piece stand out with their calmness and boldness of expression that permeate the consciousness of the reader. These stories are a valuable rarity in the literary world. ( )

Oh, I love to read original editions from the library stacks and see how an established - indeed, revered - Canadian writer was viewed before (s)he was known!

From the blurb of this first edition:
An exciting new discovery in Canadian fiction . . .
Born in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, Alistair MacLeod grew up in the coal-mining areas of Alberta and the farming areas of Dunvegan and Inverness, Nova Scotia.
Educated at St. Francis Xavier University, the University of New Brunswick and Notre Dame University, he has worked as a school teacher, miner, logger and, most recently, as Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Windsor. His short stories have appeared in magazines and journals . . . The present volume is the first full-length collection devoted to his work.

Back cover: To an outsider the stories in The Lost Salt Gift of Blood seem to belong to Cape Breton because they are stubborn, reflective, melancholy, and overflowing with the energies of family life. There are seven stories in the book; it took seven years to write them: a good part of the life of a young writer. But with this superb collection, as anyone will know who reads it, Al MacLeod’s career is just beginning. (My note, one story is set in Newfoundland and another concerns a family from Kentucky living in Indiana.)

In The Road to Rankin’s Point pg 181
“It does not matter that some things are difficult. No one has ever said that life is to be easy. Only that it is to be lived.” (90-something grandmother)

Lovely, just lovely! ( )

wonderful book with short stories with a Scottish background from Canada's east coast. ( )

These are my favorite stories. ( )

Far beyond the harbor's mouth more tiny squalls seem to be forming, moving rapidly across the surface of the sea out there beyond land's end where the blue ocean turns to gray in rain and distance and the strain of eyes. Even farther out, somewhere beyond Cape Spear lies Dublin and the Irish coast, far away but still the nearest land and closer now than is Toronto or Detroit to say nothing of North America's more western cities, seeming almost hazily visible now in imagination's mist.

Twelve short stories set in the remote, Gaelic speaking communities of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. The author's interests seem to include lighthouses, dogs and dying fathers and the first few stories are quite down-beat. I was finding it all a bit depressing before the mood lightened (a bit) about half-way through the book. My favourite stories were "The Lost Salt Gift of Blood", "The Road to Rankin's Point" and "The Closing Down of Summer", but overall, I still prefer the author's novel "No Great Mischief". ( )