by JULIET WATERS

About two thirds of the way through writing her new Cold War novel, The Way the Crow Flies, Ann-Marie MacDonald was forced to stop writing for awhile. Her first novel, Fall on Your Knees, had been chosen by Oprah for her book club, and suddenly she was back on the promotion circuit, making tons of money and nurturing a huge, adoring American readership.

Obviously there are way worse distractions for a writer. However, one of the luxuries of being a Canadian writer used to be the assurance that one could write a novel criticizing the U.S. knowing it might as well be called Fall on Deaf Ears. MacDonald's latest has some damning history lessons on the ways the U.S. exploited Canada in the early '60s (which I won't go into at the risk of spoiling a page-turner). No word yet on whether this has lost her any Oprah fans.

MacDonald, in Montreal last week, doesn't seem to care and says she was never counting on anonymity in the first place. "I always assumed I'd be getting American readers, if there were any justice in the world. Actually, I found it kind of bracing, knowing that I now had this huge platform."

Bracing is a pretty good word to describe the shift in tone from the Cape Breton gothic of her first novel to this Southern Ontario mystery-suspense. "Fall on Your Knees was the moon," she explains. "This book is the sun." Though she doesn't mean to suggest that it's ultimately any cheerier. The world of the early '60s is a world of childlike optimism, naïveté and faith, but these turn out to be the tragic undoing of most of her characters. "I wanted to kill people with sunshine," she says matter-of-factly. True enough, in the first few chapters there's so much happiness it's downright oppressive. "I wanted this to feel cooler and more measured and restrained. All the lights are on so no one thinks that there's anything spooky, or shadowy." But of course there is.

There are other differences than tone. MacDonald doesn't dispute when I label her first novel more of a… well… woman's book. The Way the Crow Flies is significantly less so. The world she captures here is much more of a man's world. MacDonald in person is boyishly small, and it's really easy to imagine her scampering around an air force base in the '60s, just like Madeleine, her eight-year-old heroine. MacDonald doesn't hide the fact that she's drawn a lot from her own life as an air-force brat for this novel. Clearly a history nerd, her eyes light up when she's discussing military experiments with nerve gas and LSD, or Star Wars conspiracy theories. One gets the definite impression she grew up comfortable with discussions of military minutiae.

Her early chapters are infused with nostalgia, and the fathers in this novel are about as far as possible from the incestuous ogre of her first novel. "This is about the world of the good dads," she explains. On the surface, dads are not the problem in The Way the Crow Flies. As the novel progresses, however, it becomes clear that integrity is a doomed and fragile commodity in an impossibly corrupt military system.

As to whether or not it was a relief to be able to write about a strong and nurturing father-daughter relationship for a change, MacDonald won't concede, noting that nothing about this book was a relief. "Writing is just fucking hard," she says with all the job satisfaction of a factory worker. Despite all the money and fame it doesn't sound like MacDonald's planning on writing another book any time soon, if ever. She's got other interests now, like a recently adopted baby daughter, and obviously there are way worse distractions for a writer.

The Way the Crow Flies by Ann-Marie Macdonald,
Knopf, HC, 720PP, $37.95