Excerpt from Sweetland by Michael Crummey, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Listen," Sweetland said, "I'm not the only one who voted against this thing."

"That's true. Forty-five in favour, three against, by the most recent ballot. But as of yesterday, yours is one of only two households who have not agreed to take the package we're offering."

"Two?" Sweetland said.

The government man paused there, to let the information sink in. He stirred his tea slowly, the clink of the spoon like a broken lever inside a mechanical doll.

"It's just me and Loveless?"

"That's where things stand," he said.

Sweetland rubbed absently at the tabletop a moment and then excused himself. He went out through the hall and up the narrow stairs to the bathroom. He put the toilet seat down and sat there a few minutes, leaning an elbow on the windowsill. He could see the back of Loveless's property from there, the ancient barn, the single gaunt cow with its head to the grass. Loveless famously drank a pint of kerosene when he was a toddler, which to Sweetland's mind told you everything you needed to know about the man. He'd suffered a twenty-four-hour attack of hiccups while he passed the fuel, his diapers reeking of oil and shit. No one was allowed to light a match near the youngster for a week.

And it was all down now to him and fucken Loveless.

"Sorry," Sweetland said when he came back into the kitchen. The government man waved the interruption away. He said, "I have to admit I'm curious, Mr. Sweetland."

"About what?"

"I don't mean to pry," he said, which Sweetland took to mean he was about to pry. "But you're turning down a substantial cash payout. Practically the whole town is against you."

"And?"

"I'm just wondering what your story is exactly."

He didn't like the little fucker, Sweetland decided. Not one bit.

He gestured toward the briefcase with his mug. "I imagine you got everything you needs to know about me in that bag of yours."

The government man watched him a second, then pulled a folder from the case. "Moses Louis Sweetland," he read. "Born November fourteenth, 1942. Which makes you—" He glanced up.

"Sixty-nine this fall."

"Math isn't my strong suit," he said. "Next of kin: none."

"Christ," Sweetland said. "I'm related to half the people in Chance Cove."

"No immediate next of kin, I think is what that means. Parents deceased. Brother and sister?"

"Both dead."

"Marital status: single." He looked up again. "Never married, is that right?"

Sweetland shrugged and said, "Look at this face," which made the younger man turn back to his papers.

"Occupation," he said. "Lightkeeper, retired."

"I was let go when they automated the light ten years back."

"You were a fisherman before that?"

"Right up until the moratorium in '92."

"So you've never lived anywhere else?"

"A couple of trips to Toronto for work," he said, "when I was about your age."

The government man made a motion toward his own face, afraid of pointing directly at Sweetland's scars. "Is that where?"

"What else is it you got in there?"

He closed the folder and sat back. "That's everything," he said.

"Not much when you lays it out like that."

"Not enough to tell me why you're so set against this move."

"Just contrary, I guess."

"You'd rather stay here with the dead, is that it?"

"A body could do worse for company."

The government man brushed his fingers lightly back and forth across the edge of the table, as if he were at a piano and not wanting to strike a note. "How long is it your people have lived out here, Mr. Sweetland?"

"Time before time," Sweetland said and then smiled at himself.

"People been fishing here two hundred years or more. I expect my crowd was the first ones on the island."

Excerpted from Sweetland: A Novel by Michael Crummey. Copyright © 2014 by Michael Crummey Ink, Inc. First American Edition 2015. With permission of the publisher, Liveright Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.