Somewhere in 19th-century Cape Breton, a young John William Smith clears land for a one-room house, his few animals, and a couple of apple trees. For a while, he’s contented, but eventually he goes looking for a wife. Soon come numerous kids, relatives, in-laws, and friends in need. Each time, John’s wife, Annie, comes to him and says, “I think we need…,” setting him off with his tools to expand the house, until finally, with the busy farm around them, their adult children build them a cottage to retire to.

Making Room is billed as a true story, but hardly feels like it: aside from the lushly painted landscapes and a few local references in the text, this tale of generous, hardworking pioneers feels very generic. Part of the problem is that Halifax’s Joanne Taylor, author of the award-winning Full Moon Rising, deprives the story of all conflict, making a narrative that feels a bit cold and abstract, even with the book’s heavy dollop of Maritime warmth. We don’t really get to know John and Annie, nor do we get much sense of life in early Cape Breton – their greatest hardship seems to be finding time to sip tea and look at the sunset (this despite a strangely casual reference to a widowed sister who’s been “alone since the Big Flu”).

This is Cape Breton painter Peter Rankin’s first illustrated book. His oil paintings, though rich in detail and alive with warm, autumnal colours, occasionally suffer from a similar lack of dynamism. Too many of the images are static and similarly framed, with very little variance in perspective. The landscape does go a long way in making up for this, however, and very nearly redeems the whole project.