Back to Back to the Land

Spoiler alert: Robert McGill’s beautifully crafted second novel is a shape shifter. One minute it is a universal coming-of-age story full of astute character observations and sly social comment; the next, a mystery novel teeter-tottering between rural Ontario and war-torn Laos. Defying easy categorization, Once We Had a Country somehow manages to turn the struggles of a commune of well-intentioned but woefully inexperienced American draft dodgers into a novel that defines what it means to be Canadian in the most Canadian way possible—by observing Americans.

If you were, or were raised by, or even were neighbour to, an American “back-to-the-lander” anywhere in rural 1970s Canada, you will get a kick out of this book. It is all there: the youthful idealism, juvenile rebellion and near–catastrophic naiveté of the hippie era. Luckily, McGill never stoops to beads and...