George & Rue (2006)

This haunting first novel recalls Goethe's dictum that one must be either ''hammer or anvil.'' It's 1949 in Nova Scotia, and when the two tragically hapless African-Canadian brothers, George & Rue, who give the book its title fatally bludgeon a taxi driver with a hammer, their fate as anvils is forever sealed. That the story is based on true events — the real-life brothers were George Elliott Clarke's cousins — makes this heartbreaking and beautifully rendered extrapolation all the more poignant.