Strong Hollow

Strong Hollow, Linda Little's bold debut novel, is set in the back country of Nova Scotia. It is a story about a crippling family, about the search for love and the search for self, and about the hardiness of the human spirit.Nineteen-year-old Jackson Bigney begins to change the day he hauls home the body of his father, found dead in a ditch after forty years of steady drinking. The spitting image of his father, a man who gave him nothing but thrashings and a fatal taste for booze, Jackson is inarticulate, gentle, and a fine wood carver, an oddity amid his brutal, tight-knit family. He builds a rough cabin and, for several drunken and aimless years, he makes a modest living as a bootlegger.One summer, Jackson's heart opens to Ian, a young fiddler. During their brief affair, Jackson grasps the joy he has unknowingly craved all his life. Ian's departure leaves Jackson desolate, ashamed of his discovery that he is gay, and determined to kill himself in one terrible binge. When his suicide attempt fails, he recovers his will to live by repairing a derelict fiddle. In trying to recapture the inspiration of Ian's music, he sees how hollowness can be the source of power, and his life changes radically.