Allan James McMaster may have been born a child of God but his earthly being was formed on the great loom of the Gael. No matter where in the world he lived, he never stopped being part of the Cape Breton fabric woven from the warp of music and the weft of language. 

Born big and made powerful in his father's smithy, he brought his strength and courage and cleverness to the copper mines of Montana, the gold mines of Northeastern Ontario, and the killing fields of the Great War. But no amount of strength or courage or cleverness could help him defeat the demon that hounded him all his life. 

McMaster's story might easily be read in its polarities, as one of heroism or transgression, of triumph or defeat. Or it may be read somewhere in the middle ground, as the story of an ordinary man on his personal path to Golgotha.