Uncle Sam leaned back in his chair to light a new Cignals, the dead one smoldering in the ashtray, smoke settling over his shoulder before squiggling in ribbons to join the coiled clouds hanging from the ceiling. After another drink and another suck, he leaned his head back and rounded his mouth into an O and blew a smoke ring to hang like a giant Cheerio above his head in a yellow-fogged halo, like the one in that picture of the upside-down Jesus.

Leonard, a live-off-the-grid guy, decides to move his partner, Ruth, and children, Bobby and Rebecca, five and eight, to a remote, live-off-the-land farm on Manitoulin Island. The farm idea soon begins to unravel. Ruth, who suffers from bipolar disorder, retreats to her bed, too depressed to be a farmer’s wife. To pay off the mortgage, Leonard works double shifts at the hog plant up the road. Rebecca and Bobby are left to fend for themselves. Enter Leonard’s brother Uncle Sam, whose Vietnam War experiences have left him deranged.

Al Davis grew up in rural Ontario. He quit school at sixteen and moved to Toronto, where he worked at various dead-end jobs until, at twenty-six, he returned to school. He completed a B.A. in English literature and an M.A. in Religious Studies. He was two years through a Master’s in Divinity when he switched to the Bachelor in Education program and became a high school teacher.

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