We know from the beginning that Tarcadia, Jonathan Campbell’s debut novel, is going to end badly, and that’s a good thing. Otherwise when a table improbably collapses under a Christmas feast a few pages into the story, the reader might close the book, thinking this is just another tale capitalizing on the current literary popularity of quaint Cape Breton Island.

But Michael the narrator starts out by saying, “I might as well tell you right away that my brother drowned in Sydney Harbour,” so the reader goes on, trying to fit this tragedy into the cheerful world that Michael describes. He and his friends live next to some great places to explore – the Sydney tar ponds, steel plant, and railroad yards. The time is the early 1970s, and while rumours of trouble at the steel plant filter down, the boys are kept busy with the kayak and raft they sail around the north tar pond.

Like Huck Finn, Michael makes the unsettling summer sound almost like an idyll. “The best place in the world was on the raft,’” he says. But also like Huck Finn, his boy’s vision can’t escape seeing, if not recognizing, the signs that things are going very wrong for his family and his community. Part of this Campbell shows through Michael’s lyrical descriptions of the toxic tar ponds: “Occasionally, you’d catch the smell of diesel exhaust that drifted on the breeze like the scent of some heavy metal flower. I don’t think there’s anyone who doesn’t like the smell of diesel exhaust.”

And even the things that Michael likes about his family – such as the fact that unlike Huck he is allowed to smoke in the house – have their downside. Both his parents work for the union, both are philosophical free-thinkers, but something has gone wrong between them, and well before Michael’s brother drowns, the family has come apart. It looks as if the steel mill will close, too. Like the rainbow an oil slick leaves on pavement, Tarcadia is both beautiful and a warning about the damage we have done and are doing to ourselves and our surroundings.