For Clayton Monroe, the last hope for refuge is a struggling settlement at the far northwest corner of Vancouver Island. San Josef is his sanctuary from the imagined demons and real enemies who have pursued him for three decades, from the Civil War battlefields of Virginia and across the plains of Kansas to the gold rush gateway of Seattle.
For Anika Frederickson, San Josef is her new home and her dream, a now failing community built on the promises of provincial government officials. The future of her colony, carved from the coastal wilderness by the tenacity of her fellow Danish idealists, is as uncertain as the storms that batter their farms.
A man like Monroe leaves a burning trail behind him, and the autumn winds of 1899 bring a new arrival to Cape Scott, sparking an inevitable challenge to Clayton's safety and Anika's family.
At San Josef, the rainforest and the river will bear witness.
This powerful novel of redemption and revenge was inspired by a real American Civil War mystery.
Harold Macy
is a forester based in the Comox Valley on Vancouver Island, where he and his sons and dog manage a thousand-acre family woodlot. His work has appeared in PRISM International, The Malahat Review, Orion, The Broken City, Rhubarb and others. San Josef is his first novel.
"Reading Harold Macy's book San Josef was a remarkable education for me. His book places the reader into life as it must have been lived in that remote area in 1898. With the use of resilient and colourful characters plus a compelling descriptive text, Macy's novel takes the reader into a completely different world. The book holds your attention from the beginning — as every good story should.
"From the opening paragraph, the author grabs the reader's interest by resolutely placing you in the location with his words "the conflict (between) the might of the Pacific against the sodden runoff from the forested hills and swamps of this north end of Vancouver Island"."
— The Ormsby Review
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