Immediately before his tragic death, stuttering mechanic Dave visits his younger brother Denny with a note for their sister Dianne. “D-don’t r-read it. D-don’t open it. D-don’t n-nothing it,” Dave commands before taking off one last time for the abandoned family cabin at Mahihkan Lake, a place where disputes are settled with shotguns and arson is written off as an act of God. After the funeral — and a brief stint in rehab for the gin-dependent Denny — he and Dianne head north to spread their adopted brother’s ashes and attempt to rebuild their fractured relationship. Harold Huckaluk is on a similar journey towards redemption after a road accident leads to the suspension of his trucking license and the loss of his assets. Divorced and estranged from his family, Harold decides to use his new freedom to canoe the Mahihkan River to the lake where he also owns a cabin. Soon the emotional toll of Harold’s past and the physical beating sustained during the trip become too much, and Harold’s sanity begins to slip, leading him to suspect that the two ravens and yellow-eyed wolf he keeps seeing are following him.

R.P. MacIntyre is best known for his award-winning young adult fiction. He has also written for television, radio, and the stage and has edited and compiled over thirty-five anthologies of YA fiction, one of which won the Canadian Librarian Association’s Book of the Year in 1997. Mahihkan Lake (2015) is his seventh book and his first adult novel.

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