The Ice Bridge

February 25, 2013
This evocative literary romance from Canadian-born Stanford professor MacDonald (Lauchlin of the Bad Heart) takes place on isolated, rugged Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, during the 1990s. Forty-seven-year-old artist Anna Starling flees her small Northern California college town and philandering husband Chet and rents a rickety old house to concentrate on her art. Her closest neighbor is the Scotsman “Red Murdock” MacLennan, a talented cabinetmaker who’s been drowning in drink his grief over his girlfriend’s death from brain cancer. He saves Anna one night after she plunges through the thin ice on her pond and they go on to forge a friendship, while Anna also gets to know local dressmaker Breagh Carmichael and learns to cope with the “grinding cold” of a Canadian winter. So when she finds, during a beachcombing excursion, a shipment of marijuana lost by local drug dealers, it’s Murdock she turns to for advice. Anna is a believable but not always sympathetic protagonist, leaving the supporting character of Murdock to make the most memorable impression in MacDonald’s satisfying, bittersweet tale of love and loss. Agent: John Pearce, Westwood Creative Artists.

Starred review from May 1, 2013

Pushcart Prize winner MacDonald (Cape Breton Road) offers evocative, detailed descriptions of the physical history of habitation at Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, drawing readers into the struggles of two separate but parallel lives. Red Murdock, an aging native of Cape Breton, is mourning the loss of his companion, Rosaire, to cancer. Through a fog of alcohol he perceives he has a new neighbor, artist Anna Starling, who is "from away," in the local speak, and has fled her native California after separating from her husband, Chet. Anna adjusts to her new surroundings a little too well, befriending local single mother Breagh and her charming but dangerous boyfriend, Livingstone. Things get messy as Anna is drawn into a web of violence and law breaking, but Red is awakened from his depression by Anna's plight. VERDICT Contemplative and thought-provoking, MacDonald's latest superficially resembles but arguably surpasses Annie Proulx's The Shipping News in depth and complexity. Highly recommended.--Henry Bankhead, Santa Clara Cty. Lib., CA

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2013
During decades of marriage in a California college town, as the trajectories of their careers shifted, artist Anna Starling and her writer husband, Chet, each strayed from their marital bed. But when the love of a much younger woman strikes Chet like lightning, Anna leaves for remote Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. As she deals with her pain in private and tries to refresh her artwork gone stale, her nearest neighbor in the isolated community, solitary Murdock MacLennan, is grieving the recent cruel death of the woman he loved. Even in an area that values the work of the hands, modern life intrudes: where once there were rum runners, now there are drug smugglers, whose bale of marijuana goes missing and is found by Anna, a situation that draws her and Murdock closer. In MacDonald's languid prose, Cape Breton is as much a presence as Anna and Murdock; as their inner lives are probed, the area's landscape is detailed, and its midwinter cold is palpable. A vivid portrayal of a setting and the renewal of love after loss.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)