Hugh MacLennan Series

Here are the final two in this series. Each Man's Son is a novel set in Cape Breton in a coal mining community. It features a violent death near the end of the novel. The son's father, a failed boxer, kills his mother. The image of the coal cart underground evokes a coffin

The Return of Sphinx is a novel about a prominent Canadian politician whose career is destroyed when his son gets involved in the separatist movement in Quebec and is arrested for making a bomb. The revolt of youth against parental authority. The crushed smoking pipe seems like the right image to suggest this.





I couldn't put my finger on why the image of the canoe viewed from above on the cover of The Watch That End's the Night resonated so strongly for me. Then I realized that it reminded me of what was probably the seminal book of my childhood, Paddle to the Sea. An indian boy carves a wooden canoe and leaves in on a mountain top in the spring. The book follows its journey to the sea.