Leo McKay's tautly compelling and powerful debut novel centres on the Burrows family, whose lives have been changed forever by a devastating mining accident in which twenty-six men perished. It is also a story of a father and son relationship, which moves from conflict to uneasy resolution.

Set in a small Nova Scotia town, told in alternating chapters that shift between characters, and from the present to the past and back again, the narrative plays out against the backdrop of looming tragedy. This is the story of Ziv Burrows, and his journey to self-discovery; of his father, Ennis, a former union organizer, stubborn and unable to communicate the love he feels; and of Ziv's brother, Arvel, who is ultimately drawn into the mine. We also come to know the women in their lives: Meta, Ziv's ex-girlfriend, now living in Japan; Arvel's wife, Jackie, who hopes for a better life for herself and her two children in the city; and Ennis' wife, Dunya.

In the aftermath of the explosion, and as the investigation into what caused it unfolds, the members of the Burrows family are forced to confront each other—and themselves—bringing the novel to its moving and redemptive conclusion.

With characters who are memorably, compassionately drawn, and written in spare, hard-hitting prose, Twenty-Six starkly evokes in all its drama and pathos the town of Albion Mines and the community of people whose lives have, for generations, been shaped by the mining of coal. A strong, vibrant new literary voice in Canada, Leo McKay Jr. has written a novel of universal human struggle and understanding that is bound to become a classic.