Born in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, to Gaelic-speaking parents from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Alistair MacLeod returned with his family to their roots in Inverness County, Cape Breton, when he was 10. Although he later obtained his doctorate at the University of Notre Dame with a dissertation on Thomas Hardy and eventually taught for more than 30 years at the University of Windsor, Ontario, he never strayed far from his spiritual home of Cape Breton.
In 17 short stories and one novel, he captured the beauty and the horror of life in this constantly changing environment with its many inhabitants and the ancestors who haunt their lives.
