Cape Breton’s Frank Macdonald promoting book in Calgary

Novel highlights true cost of development

Sydney, June 19, 2012 – Award-winning novelist Frank Macdonald (A Forest for Calum) will be in Calgary this weekend, promoting his new book A Possible Madness.

Macdonald is from Inverness, on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, a place well-acquainted with the realities of the push for resource extraction that sometimes comes at a cost to rural communities.

A Possible Madness (CBU Press, 2011) recounts the story of the fictional town of Shean, a depleted mining town low on jobs and self esteem – lower on prospects.

The lengths to which civic leaders will go in order to “save” Shean requires a leap of faith that has unintended consequences. A large corporation’s secret scheme to exploit coal from an improbable source is slowly uncovered by the local newspaper, revealing a plan that could bring badly needed jobs – and environmental degradation.

Local politicians try to marginalize the few voices of dissent, including the newspaper, but some voices are not easily silenced.

Macdonald’s gift for character development draws the reader into a scenario played out in countless rural communities across the country.

The lessons learned from A Possible Madness are not wasted on Macdonald’s local readership. A handmade sign nailed to a roadside tree on Route 19 just east of Inverness shouts “Stop the Fracking Madness,” homage to the novel’s “madness” and a reference to the highly charged debate over a drilling method known as fracking (hydraulic fracturing).

While Frank Macdonald is quick to point out his book is a work of fiction, testimonials from readers suggest that it resonates as an account of the manner in which politicians and corporations are sometimes in conflict with communities. Linden MacIntyre, author of The Bishop’s Man and Why Men Lie says A Possible Madness is “all too plausible.” The Halifax Chronicle Herald calls the book “a cautionary tale with impeccable timing.”

Frank Macdonald is the award-winning author of A Forest for Calum, long-listed for the 2007 IMPAC International Dublin Literary Award. In 2010, he published T.R.’s Adventure at Angus the Wheeler’s, a children`s book, illustrated by Virginia McCoy. A Possible Madness is his second novel.

Macdonald will be at Indigo Books and Music, Signal Hill Centre, on Sunday, June 24, between 1 and 3 p.m.

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