cape breton island (n.s.)

Relates the startling effects of Beethoven's music on the Kennedys' new cow.

Angus, feeling left out of the family orchestra, decides he would like to play the fiddle, but it takes a lot of hard work to coax the music out of the instrument.

Two Scottish sisters, living on the western island of Barra in the 1850s, relate, in alternate voices and linked narrative poems, their experiences after their family is forcibly evicted and separated with one sister accompanying their parents and younger siblings to Cape Breton, Canada, and the other staying behind with other family on the small island of Mingulay.

James, the son of a coal miner, goes with his father for the first time to work in the mines of Cape Breton.

Alexander MacDonald, one of the MacDonald clan that has lived in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia since 1779 when Calum MacDonald, his wife, twelve children, and dog landed in Canada, remains dedicated to the memory of Scotland and his grandmother's admonition to "always look after your blood.".