Sheldon Currie tells a tale of soldiers of Christ and those of the Second World War in his third novel, Down the Coaltown Road. Coaltown Road is a “wide strip of ashes and mud, full of potholes” that runs through the isolated Cape Breton mining community and the minds of its inhabitants as they wait for the war to end so it can be paved and smoothed over.

Central to the novel is the unforgettable Father Rod MacDonald, a young veteran whose short-lived war effort cost him an eye and whose religious vocation is more of a career option than a calling. Experience and contemplation, however, provide Father Rod with a keen sense of place and awareness. He understands that the territorial jealousy of the islanders is a breeding ground for misplaced pride, false joy, and xenophobia. When Mussolini sends Italian troops to the aid of Hitler, the dictator’s actions reverberate across the Atlantic. The labour unrest in the mines of Coaltown – which have a strong contingent of Italian workers – shifts from the political to the personal as the Italians are rounded up for internment in civilian camps.

Currie effectively opens a shameful chapter of Canadian history while revealing the fear, hypocrisy, and longing inherent in the religious and social rituals communities hide behind. Currie threads his narrative like a finely honed instrument, tightening or adding slack when the tune he’s set requires it. An accumulative and provocative intensity bubbles under the surface and builds as the novel progresses, but Currie backs off just as it reaches the boiling point. It takes a moment for the reader to reconcile this option, but Currie finds more subtle means to pull the narrative together. Of all the fine things offered in Down the Coaltown Road, the novel’s finest is its subtle examination of longing.