The Devil is Innocent

The Devil is Innocent is a robust work of humour depicting life in a rural Ontario community of fifty years ago. It is about growing up and discovering the facts of life, love, belief, and local tyranny. The cast of characers, iconoclast, earthy, outcast, generous and grasping, are gathered in fabulous Mountford. The little town is recreated vividly: from school, revival meeting, swimming hole and frozen skating river, to field, forest, livery stable and drug store. In keeping with time, place, and person, the language and limericks are fresh and uninhibited. There is male chauvinism, as well as surprising anticipation of modern feminism. The reader has a difficult time deciding how much of this book is fiction and how far it is an autobiography of total recall. This is Gordon Green's seventeenth book. Knowing him and such of his works as The Praying Mantis, A Time to Pass Over: Life With a Pioneer Grandmother, Diary of a Dirty Old Man, and Professor Go Home, we judge that it contains a good deal of both fact and invention. One thing we can promise you: it is never dull. Gordon Green is a great storyteller. Don't worry whether The Devil is fit prose for adolescents, adults, or simply the eternally youthful. But, do hang on tightly to your hammock or wheelchair as you read it.