When Catastrophe Runs in the Family

Why Men Lie, the final book in the Cape Breton Trilogy, draws Linden MacIntyre’s exploration of trauma and its reverberations to a close. Through chronicling the vicissitudes of two generations of the Gillis and MacAskil families, MacIntyre depicts an array of grim misfortunes ranging from the simple to the complex: blunt sudden catastrophe, prolonged predatory abuse and the sustained, chronic strain of a dysfunctional parent-child relationship. The aftermath of these fearful events, and the desperate measures these survivors take to live with their troubled past, often with disastrous results, is the trilogy’s major concern.

The Long Stretch opens the trilogy with cousins John and Sextus Gillis in early middle age, looking back at their turbulent adolescence. As sons of fathers who returned from serving in Holland during World War Two, they remain bewildered as to how...