Saints of Big Harbour is a novel by Lynn Coady

Lynn Coady

-Life and career:Coady grew up in Port Hawkesbury, Nova Scotia. After high school, she attended Carleton University in Ottawa; after graduating, she moved to New Brunswick, where she worked at odd jobs for several years and began a career as a playwright...

, published in 2002 by Doubleday Canada. It was Coady's first novel to be published in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

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Plot summary

In Saints of Big Harbour, Coady portrays a small community of Cape Breton Island, found off the coast of Nova Scotia. The book focuses on the perspectives of the main character, Guy Boucher, a fatherless Acadian teenager, and of those who surround him: his alcoholic uncle Isadore, a quietly wise girl named Pam, his draft-dodger English teacher and a group of boys stuck in emotional adolescence. As the story unfolds it becomes clear that Guy lives in a community firmly characterized by clichés of gender, beauty, strength, family and love.