Dan Ainslie, a brilliant doctor working with the miners of his native Cape Breton Island, is forty-two and deeply in love with his wife. Longing for the son he can never have, he comes to love the young Alan MacNeil, whose father deserted him and his mother several years before. Alan's father's return brings tragedy to those around him.

Born in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia, Hugh MacLennan (1907-1990) taught at McGill University from 1951 to 1981 and wrote novels and essays that helped define Canadian literature. His novels include Barometer Rising (1941), Two Solitudes (1945), Each Man's Son (1951), The Watch That Ends the Night (1959), Return of the Sphinx (1967), and Voices in Time (1980). He also published several nonfiction works, including Cross Country (1949), Thirty and Three (1955), The Scotchman’s Return and Other Essays (1960), and The Colour of Canada (1967).

Hugh MacLennan's profile page

"Each Man's Son has many of the qualities that we have come to admire in MacLennan's work. It has a clear and, at times, eloquent prose style; it has many individual scenes that are sharply and sympathetically projected; and it gives constant evidence of a lively and flexible mind." The University of Toronto Quarterly

"What is distinctive about Each Man's Son is its warmth and intimacy … Expertly planned and executed, it is the most human of his books." The Globe and Mail