Cape Breton Island continues to earn its place at the table of Canadian literature. God’s Country offers an essential collection of classic stories that helped build that award-winning reputation, as well as several rare and harder-to-find stories that maintain the growing respect while pointing toward future literary achievements. This is a lasting book that works for both bedside reading and the high school and university classroom. In God’s Country you’ll find stories by Alistair MacLeod, Joan Clark, Lynn Coady, D.R. MacDonald, Silver Donald Cameron, D.C. Troicuk, Sheldon Currie and many more — gathered under one rich and attractive roof. And these classic writers are only some of the authors this new volume has to share.

This superb collection introduces Carmel Mikol and Hector MacNeil and Sue McKay Miller within a solid blend of noted writers including Carol Bruneau, Clive Doucet and Maureen Hull. From country life to city, on Cape Breton Island and away, here are Tim Vassallo and Leacock Award winner Bill Conall, Teresa O’Brien, Ellison Robertson and the comic genius of Julie Curwin and Larry Gibbons. Victor Sakalauskas and Dave Doucette portray children in harrowing, breathtaking circumstances, and the realism of D.C. Troicuk, Joyce Rankin, Ruth Schneider, David Muise, and Jigs Gardner deliver exquisite stories from life. Poignant, comic, powerful and heart-wrenching, Local Hero is marvelous evidence of Cape Breton’s place inlasting Canadian literature.