Each Man's Son

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McClelland & Stewart, Jun 5, 2009 - Fiction - 280 pages
In Each Man’s Son, his fourth novel, Hugh MacLennan returns to his native Cape Breton to present life in a small mining community.

Dr. Daniel Ainslie, who ministers to the rough miners, yearns for a son, which he can never have. He comes to love young Alan MacNeil, the son of Mollie MacNeil and her absent husband, Archie, who deserted his family several years before to seek his fortune as a professional fighter. Now Archie returns, bitter and defeated, to wreak tragedy on his community.

Originally published in 1951, Each Man’s Son, a stunning account of the rationalistic Ainslie and the animalistic MacNeil, moves inexorably towards its harrowing conclusion.

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About the author (2009)

A major 20th century Canadian author, Hugh MacLennan was born in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, in 1907. His seven novels and many essays and travel books present a chronicle of Canada that often mediates between the old world of its European cultural heritage and the new world of American vitality and materialism. Among his many honours, he won five Governor General’s Awards. Hugh MacLennan died in Montreal in 1990.

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