Twenty-Six
CBC Books | CBC | Posted: March 15, 2017 5:24 PM | Last Updated: April 7, 2017
Leo McKay Jr.
Leo McKay Jr.'s bestselling novel is set in a small Nova Scotia town, where a family is changed forever after a devastating mining accident claims the lives of twenty-six men. As the story shifts back and forth in time and between characters, we meet the men and women of the Burrows family: brothers Ziv and Arvel, drawn to the mine for different reasons; their father, a former union organizer; Ziv's ex-girlfriend, now living in Japan; and Arvel's wife, who hopes for a better life for herself in the city. In the aftermath of the explosion, and as the investigation into its causes unfolds, the members of the Burrows family are forced to confront each other — and themselves — bringing the novel to its moving and redemptive conclusion. Written in spare, hard-hitting prose, and inspired in part by the Westray mining disaster, Twenty-Six is a novel of universal human struggle and understanding that evokes in all its drama and pathos a community transformed by tragedy. (From McClelland & Stewart)
From the book
Ziv's first thought had been the same one he always had when some unidentified disturbance awoke him in the middle of the night: nuclear war. He'd waited in Bundy's bathroom for the light to blink off. He knew that just before the heat blast vaporized you, radio communication and electrical service would black out. The shadows in the tiny space beneath the stairs danced and skidded about as the bulb that cast its light onto the walls rocked at the end of its wire. Water in the toilet made waves against the sides of the bowl. He put a hand to the bulb to stop its swinging and awaited the loss of electricity. He wondered whether he'd have time to feel any heat before he was turned into a little steam and smoke and ash.
From Twenty-Six by Leo McKay Jr. ©2003. Published by McClelland & Stewart.