Blow Up the Trumpet in the New Moon

June M. Blurton is a retired speech pathologist.

The time is 1935. The Great Depression has drained hope from all of
Canada, and especially from the small East Coast village of St.
Gomorrah. And then Pius the Pious puts his head out of a second-storey
window on the main street and neighs. He is where no horse should be,
and this is the story of his liberation, and, for at least one evening,
the liberation of the whole village.

This highly readable story borders on fantasy. There is the second
coming of Jesus Christ; the illicit still in the old copper mine, much
patronized by the Stipendiary Magistrate; the money-making schemes of
the directors of the Harnass Racing Society; the manipulation of the
World Press; and a teenager’s first love affair. The characters are
real people with wonderfully improbable names. From Trembling Smith to
Coppermine Kate to Albert Almighty, they are neither wholly good nor
wholly bad. How has written a funny book that leaves the reader with the
same feeling of hope that St. Gomorrah felt.