• Reading age: 16 to 18

Frank Macdonald’s reputation for colourful characters, subtle satire and social conscience is omnipresent in the hilarious adventures of Cape Breton pals Tinker and Blue in late-’60s San Francisco.

At age 19 and 20, respectively, Tinker Dempsey and his oldest friend Blue figured it was time they followed generations of Cape Bretoners and crossed the Canso Causeway, if for no other reason than to find a few stories they could call their own when their wandering ways brought them back home. It had been Blue’s idea to drive their fourth-hand 1957 push-button Plymouth out to San Fran­cisco to check out the famed Haight-Ashbury district.

What they found was much more than they – and San Francisco – bargained for.

Hitchhiking hippies, homespun humour, wit and wisdom, troubles in love and trouble with the law converge to make Tinker and Blue a funny and clever flashback that only Frank Macdonald could imagine.

Frank Macdonald is the award-winning author of A Forest for Calum (CBU Press 2005) and A Possible Madness (CBU Press 2011), both long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and both finalists for an Atlantic Book Award. A long-time and award-winning columnist, Macdonald is also an accomplished writer of short stories, drama, poetry and songs. His humorous, often satirical columns in the Inverness Oran have twice been anthologized; Assuming I’m Right in 1990 became a stage production that has toured Nova Scotia and elsewhere in Canada. His play Her Wake won Best Canadian Play at the Liverpool International Theatre Festival in 2010 and, also in 2010, he authored T.R.’s Adventure at Angus the Wheeler’s (CBU Press), a children's book, illustrated by Virginia McCoy. Frank lives in Inverness, Cape Breton. A new novel, Tinker and Blue is due for publication in the fall of 2014.

Frank Macdonald's profile page