Margaret McNeil has lost a father and a brother to the coal mines of Cape Breton. Her grandfather's as good as gone with the black lung, and her mother carries so much bitterness she might as well be buried alongside the lot of them. In this powerful love story set against the darkness and disasters of mining life, Margaret MacNeil tells the joyful, heart-scalding story of her hard-handed family and her rebellious love for Neil Currie, a miner by trade and a bagpiper for the joy of it. The Glace Bay Miners' Museum has been adapted both for stage and for film. The film adaptation, released in 1996 as Margaret's Museum, starring Helena Bonham Carter, Clive Russel, and Kate Nelligan, won critical acclaim and a fistful of awards, including a "two thumbs up" from Siskel and Ebert.

The Glace Bay Miners' Museum (Between the Covers Collection)

Literature & Fiction

Currie, Sheldon

Contemporary

BTC Audiobooks

The world has taken notice. From Alistair MacLeod's recent IMPAC literary award, through movies based on the work of David Adams Richards and Sheldon Currie, to the epic television series based on the work of Bernice Morgan, the international community has soundly acknowledged the critical and commercial success of Atlantic writers. Atlantica is the first major anthology of Atlantic fiction since Best Maritime Short Stories was published in 1988 and showcases stories by some of Canada's most exciting authors — established, newly popular, and emerging. Given the regional penchant for storytelling, it's not surprising that the Maritimes and Newfoundland produce a continuous stream of spellbinding writers. Among the stories in Atlantica are Anne Simpson's Journey Prize-winning "Dreaming Snow," Carol Bruneau's "The Tarot Reader," "Batter My Heart" by Lynn Coady, Bernice Morgan's "Poems in a Cold Climate" "The Train Family" by Joan Clark, "Missing Notes" by David Helwig, "The Party" by Herb Curtis and "Clearances" by Alistair MacLeod. Readers from "away" will recognize Sheldon Currie's hilariously gothic tale "The Glace Bay Miner's Museum" as the basis of Helena Bonham Carter's acclaimed movie Margaret's Museum. Some stories have been excerpted from novels, including David Adams Richards's The Bay of Love and Sorrows, Wayne Johnston's The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, John Steffler's The Afterlife of George Cartwright, and Donna Morrissey's Kit's Law. Remarkably diverse in age, style, and cultural identity, the writers in this anthology raise a common voice that defines Atlantic Canada. Each with an individual approach to language and writing, they offer a collective view of the east, conscious of tradition but not confined by it. By turns funny, poignant and pensive, the stories in Atlantica firmly place eastern Canadian culture on the world map of literature.

Atlantica: Stories from the Maritimes and Newfoundland

Wilson, Budge

JOHNSTON, Wayne

Choyce, Lesley

MacLEOD, Alistair

Bruneau, Carol

Curtis, Wayne

Morrissey, Donna

Morgan, Bernice

Coady, Lynn

Baxter, Joan

Simpson, Anne

Steinfeld, J.J.

Steffler, John

Helwig, David

Curtis, Herb

Hull, Maureen

Fogwill Porter, Helen

Adams Richards, David

Clark, Joan.

Goose Lane Editions

The Glace Bay Miner's Museum

Literary

Deluge Press

Set in a small coal-mining town in Cape Breton at the beginning of World War II, Down the Coaltown Road is the story of Tomassio, an Italian immigrant who is seized by the police and taken to an interment camp. When Tomassio escapes the camp, his breakout has far-reaching consequences for those close to him — for his wife Anna, who learned in Italy at an early age how to get what she needs from a man; for his son Gelo, who is suddenly the man of the house; for his lover Cathy, who renounced one family for her husband and risks losing another for Tomassio; and for his enemy and Cathy’s husband, Ump, a brash and bigoted man. As the social fabric of Coaltown strains and rends, it’s up to Father Rod MacDonald to mend the pieces and transform individual acts of contrition into shared acts of redemption. Down the Coaltown Road is a rich portrait of loving and yearning.

Down the Coaltown Road: A Novel

British & Irish

Key Porter Books, Fenn Publishing

Taking as his inspiration two classic texts, Hugh MacLennan’s Two Solitudes and Dante’s Inferno, Sheldon Currie finds new meaning in MacLennan’s dichotomy and profane humour in Dante’s divine comedy as he tells the story of one man’s search for redemption. Ian’s journey through hell is unconventional: he encounters a nun-turned-torch singer and is sidetracked by baseball games and temporary amnesia. As Ian loves and leaves a succession of women and career paths, we come to root for him to find a star to guide him home.

Two More Solitudes

Key Porter Books

Raised in Reserve Mines, Sheldon Currie teaches literature and writing at Saint Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia. His books include 'The Story so Far'.

The Glace Bay Miners' Museum: The novel

Breton Books

Pottersfield Press

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