My Dad

A frost-bitten trading post on the edge of nowhere becomes the stage for an Oedipal ice-storm: Tom O’Day, whose gaze already burns holes in the virgin snow, covets the flame-haired stepchild of the factor, a man whose velvet-gloved tyranny over Tom’s father smells of birch switches and unpaid debts. The factor, sniffing rivalry, unearths an old bloodstain on the elder O’Day’s parka and pins a frontier murder on him, expecting the wilderness to swallow the scandal whole. Tom, half-lover, half-detective, sleuths through ledger-ink blizzards, sled-dog silence, and the laconic stares of Mounties until he exhumes a bullet, a torn mitten, and a conscience, turning the accusation backward like a rifle in a blizzard. Father redeemed, tyrant shackled, girl claimed—yet the final campfire flickers with the knowledge that innocence here is only a thinner coat than guilt.