The riveting Alford Saga continues with James Alford, the Deserter, battling old age and ferocious winters, but even more crippling, the departure of his son and only heir, Young Jim, who sets out on snowshoes for Montreal, seven hundred miles away.Arriving at last in Montreal, Jim is driven by starvation into a back-breaking job constructing the Victoria Bridge. Jim finds lodgings with an Irish widow in Griffintown, and falls in love. After being deceived in this romance, he rejects the bitter realities of urban life and returns to the Old Homestead and its community of pioneers. His ageing father recruits him to rally recalcitrant neighbours to found a school for their children and a church for their worship in Shigawake. Enthralling and adventurous, THE PIONEER is Book Three in the Alford Saga, a series chronicling two hundred years of Canadian history, as seen through the eyes of a settler’s family.

Paul Almond, OC, was one of Canada's preeminent film and television directors, and has directed and produced over 130 television dramas for the CBC, BBC, ABC and Granada Television (SevenUp). He has now turned his talents to writing a series of novels based on his family's own PIONEERing adventures in Canada: The Alford Saga, five of which have been published, (The DESERTER, The Survivor, The Pioneer, The Pilgrim, and The Chaplain) and three more to come over the next two years (The Gunner, The Hero, and The Inheritor). Paul Almond lives on the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec and Malibu, California. www.paulalmond.com

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