By Dan Brown

I recommend Donald Calabrese’s new graphic novel Coady for a couple reasons.

First, you might – as I did – learn something about Canadian history, specifically about the Antigonish Movement in Nova Scotia.

And second, the ending packs a powerful punch.

In its languorous epilogue, the story takes a turn I did not see coming.

The entire narrative strays into Twin Peaks territory. I won’t give it away, but do you remember how Agent Cooper and Laura Palmer had the same dream? It’s kinda like that. 

The rest of the book consists of alternating chapters.

This structure is Calabrese’s way of telling two simultaneous stories. 

One is about the priest Moses Coady, who helped organize poor fisherman, farm workers and miners so they could improve their communities in the 1930s and 1940s, an effort that not only changed living conditions in Canada’s Ocean Playground, but also in other provinces and even globally.

The other is about Kody Finnegan, a researcher who’s putting together a biography of Coady in the present day. She’s finding it hard to square the folk tales that have grown up around the priest, with what really might have happened back in the day.

Is it possible Coady was strong enough to pull a horse and driver (not the other way around) when once visiting a remote village in the winter? At least one witness claims the fable is true.
This uncertainty leads to some amazing scenes of magic realism from artist/writer Calabrese, as when Coady is depicted as a giant, in one panel writing on the landscape in a plowed field with a humongous pencil – literally making his mark on the province.

In another section he grows so large during a conversation that his interlocutor fits on his shoulder.

The parts featuring Finnegan will ring true to anyone who has been through grad school, including unkind comments from colleagues (it has been said university politics are so vicious because the stakes are so small). The deeper she gets into the priest’s story, the harder time she has distinguishing history from lore.

To make matters even more interesting, if the biography sections are to believed, there was no one who did more to demystify the Coady legend than the clergyman himself.

I spent a year working at a newspaper on the East Coast as a young journalist and I don’t recall hearing much about the Antigonish Movement, which – although he was derided in public meetings as a red by hecklers – Coady and his allies billed as a third way between capitalism and communism.

And that ending! It still gives me a shiver.

Coady, Donald Calabrese’s debut as a graphic novelist, is published by Conundrum Press.

As always, I would love to hear in the comments about what graphic novels and comics you all are reading this week!

Dan Brown has covered pop culture for more than 34 years as a journalist and also moderates L.A. Mood’s monthly Graphic-Novel Group book club.