Abstract
A coming of age story about Roddie Gillies and his guardian and grandfather Calum, one of the last remaining Gaelic speakers in the once-proud mining town of Shean. A quiet and stoic man, Calum and his aging friends illuminate for us the changing world around them: the loss of the coal mines, the labour strife and lean years endured, the religious parochialism that divides families and communities and, most important, a disappearing language. The setting is Cape Breton; the themes of cultural and rural change and decline are universal.