Eyestone, the debut collection of short fiction by D.R. MacDonald, was the sort of book to make readers hold their collective breath. Nearly flawless in its own right, its publication in 1988 – an occasion marked with prizes and grants – seemed to herald the arrival of a phenomenal new talent, and readers waited eagerly for MacDonald’s next book. It’s been 13 years, but MacDonald’s debut novel, Cape Breton Road, is worth the wait.

Cape Breton Road tells the story of just-adult Innis, deported from his home in the United States for car theft and returned to his mother’s birthplace on Cape Breton Island to stay with his uncle Starr. Their relationship, fragile to begin with, is threatened by the arrival of Claire, who, romantically involved with Starr and on the run from a previous relationship, moves in with the two men.

In lesser hands, this situation might have been mined for simple domestic drama, but MacDonald has his sights set higher. Cape Breton Road functions, on one level, as a suspense novel, the tension of the domestic situation building slowly and inexorably. It is also solidly a novel of place, vividly evoking the Cape Breton landscape, its people, and its culture. Most significantly, the novel is an exploration of Innis’s mind and slow-building maturity, of guilt and history, of belief and escape, of dreams lost and sacrificed. With an almost alchemical talent, MacDonald transmutes the domestic and regional to the stuff of myth, of archetypal richness.

MacDonald writes with a slow, melodic fluidity that belies the complexity of his writing, and of the story he is telling. Cape Breton Road is a novel to be approached with caution: a cursory reading will likely result in frustration, and certainly in an opportunity missed. A slow, immersive reading, on the other hand, will reward every moment spent.