Frank Macdonald's reputation for colourful characters, subtle satire and social conscience is omnipresent in the hilarious adventures of Cape Breton pals Tinker and Blue in late-'60s San Francisco. At age 19 and 20, respectively, Tinker Dempsey and his oldest friend Blue figured it was time they followed generations of Cape Bretoners and crossed the Canso Causeway, if for no other reason than to find a few stories they could call their own. It was Blue's idea to drive their fourth-hand 1957 push-button Plymouth out to San Fran­cisco to check out the famed Haight-Ashbury district. What they found was more than they - and San Francisco - bargained for. Hitchhiking hippies, homespun humour, wit and wisdom, troubles in love and trouble with the law converge to make Tinker and Blue a funny and clever flashback that only Frank Macdonald could imagine.

A coming of age story about Roddie Gillies and his guardian and grandfather Calum, who is one of the last remaining Gaelic speakers in the once-proud mining town of Shean. A quiet and stoic man, Calum Gillies 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.

Like many smallish and inelegant towns that dot the coastlines and crossroads of this country, Shean's postwar, post-industrial economy is in desperate disrepair, and the lengths that some civic leaders will go to in order to do "what's best" for a town like Shean sometimes requires a leap of faith that has unintended consequences. When a global corporation plans a daring scheme to exploit the remaining coal from an improbable source - and thus to secure Shean's economic future - politicians try to marginalize the few voices of dissent. Some voices, however, are not easily silenced.