For lovers of history, travel writing, and sharp social observation comes a finely etched portrait of Nova Scotia by one of the province's most gifted writers. No journalist has travelled the back roads, hidden vales, and fog-soaked coves of Nova Scotia as widely as John DeMont. No writer has spent as much time considering its peculiar warp and woof of humanity, geography, and history. This book is the summation of DeMont's years of travel, research, and thought. It tells the story of what is, from the European view of things, the oldest part of Canada. Before Confederation it was also the richest, but now it is among the poorest. Its defining myths and stories are mostly about loss, willful endurance, and sheer determination. Equal parts narrative, memoir, and meditation, the book tells with enthralling clarity a complex and multi-dimensional story: the overwhelming of the first peoples and the arrival of a mľange of pioneers who carved out pockets of the wilderness; the random acts and unexplained mysteries; the mixture of shameful achievements and noble failures; the rapture and misery; the twists of destiny, and the hard-heartedness of fate. Winner of the 2018 Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award. 2017.