Read more
Diamond Donnie Ross is at the centre of this remarkable story of a coal-mining community in Cape Breton in the 1920s. Black Around the Eyes evokes the men and women, the joys and grief, the stark beauty and harsh struggles of that time and place.
This moving, searing novel, at times hilarious and at others heart-rending, has been out of print for far too long. Moose House is proud to make it available again, in a revised edition which corrects some errors in the original and includes a new foreword by the author.
Jeremy Akerman's memoir, Outsider, includes a revealing passage about the writing of Black Around the Eyes. It is also available from Moose House Publications.
About the author
Jeremy Akerman is an adoptive Nova Scotian who has lived in the province since 1964. In that time he has been an archaeologist, a radio announcer, a politician, a senior civil servant, a newspaper editor and a film actor.He is painter of landscapes and portraits, a singer of Irish folk songs, a lover of wine, and a devotee of history, especially of the British Labour Party. Jeremy's first novel, Black Around the Eyes, was published in 1981. Other projects required his intention until recently, when he was able to take up fiction again. During 2023-24 he wrote and published eight novels.
