The Lost Salt Gift of Blood - Tapa blanda

This evocative and haunting collection is set in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, a remote region where Gaelic is still spoken, old legends live on, and the same cold sea that washes the Hebrides beats against the granite cliffs. With a tearing lyricism 'The Lost Salt Gift of Blood' lays bare the joys, the fears, the darkness, and the shining hopes of communities whose isolation is at once a curse and a blessing.

Alistair MacLeod is one of Canada's most acclaimed writers, yet his entire life work consists of little more than a dozen published short stories. This volume contains all of them.

"MacLeod writes with the sort of intensity that gives his beautifully shaped sentences the haunting power of the Gaelic songs which are within him."
THE TIMES

"MacLeod's melancholy and startlingly beautiful stories are like live wires, their currents of memory and grief shocking through their unprotected simplicity ... each one is like a novel boiled down to its essence."
OBSERVER

"MacLeod belongs to that very special breed of writer who uses a specific place and its people to convey a universal experience. This is a fine collection."
GLASGOW HERALD