A Forest for Calum

Described through the eyes of teenager Roddie Gillies, Shean is a coal-mining town somewhere on the west coast of mid-20th-century Cape Breton when the Island was still a collection of relatively-isolated rural communities. This coming-of-age novel follows Roddie's Catholic schooldays, the development of his artistic talents with the encouragement of a nun, his adolescent capers and budding sexuality and summers spent at the race track..Roddie lives with his grandfather, Calum Gillies,...
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Described through the eyes of teenager Roddie Gillies, Shean is a coal-mining town somewhere on the west coast of mid-20th-century Cape Breton when the Island was still a collection of relatively-isolated rural communities. This coming-of-age novel follows Roddie's Catholic schooldays, the development of his artistic talents with the encouragement of a nun, his adolescent capers and budding sexuality and summers spent at the race track..Roddie lives with his grandfather, Calum Gillies, a Gaelic speaker and a carpenter who settled in Shean when the mines were booming. A quiet and stoic man, Calum and his aging friends illuminate the changing world around them: The loss of the mines, the strikes they endured, religious parochialism and a disappearing language. One of Calum's compatriots composes a poem in Gaelic commemorating miners passed. Assisted by Roddie and his friends, the men plant the poem--the 18 letters of the Gaelic alphabet corresponding to 18 different trees--an ill-fated forest of 400 trees to memorialize their disappearing life.