Shakebone
At first glance, Shakebone is a typical northern town.
Nothing but bungalows and pick-up trucks, where everyone knows everyone else. The crumbling statue of a pick-axe wielding miner looms over Main Street. Once a symbol of prosperity, it now presides over a town ravaged by unemployment, its streets filled with boarded-up storefronts and for-sale signs.
Rick Drake, a restoration architect, returns to Shakebone to save an historic building. Haunted by a tragedy that shattered his life in the city, this much-needed job offer provides the opportunity of retreating to his childhood town. But what Rick hasn’t counted on, is that something else is waiting for him in Shakebone…
On the highway, an elk charges out from the woods. Rick’s car collides with the animal, killing it on impact. When Shakebone authorities arrive at the scene, they’re relieved to find Rick unharmed. But they’re troubled by one unsettling detail: the dead animal has an antler span of fifteen feet, not unlike that of its extinct ancestors.
There are other strange happenings in the town as of late…
Dead bears, illegally butchered for their gallbladders are discovered on the edge of town. Meanwhile a large bear is seen in Shakebone behaving as though on a mission. It would never occur to the townsfolk that this bear is the giant-sized man who arrives one night—an eccentric stranger, passionate about blueberries and fish, who also appears fixated with finding the bear-killer.
In fact, here moving among the town’s inhabitants on the ordinary streets of Shakebone is a combination of the strange magic of the natural world and the thinly veiled realm of spirits, ghosts and shape-shifters.
Beer, plaid jackets and shotguns exist in lively contrast to a supernatural world that has something important to reveal. The ancient, extinct elk has appeared for a purpose. The spirits and ghosts have crossed through the "thin space" for a reason. With humour and guile they toy with the townspeople who are too preoccupied with their own dramas and schemes to notice.
So, the thin space continues to get thinner and thinner, stranger and stranger...Until one day a shocking truth is revealed that will change the life of Rick Drake and those wholive in a town called Shakebone.
Who says life is easier in the North?