A friend mailed me an ARC of this, which had a 1000-book run, which seems to be typical for this author, so I don't think she has much visibility. Which seems a shame to me, as it's the kind of quiet, well-researched micro history I really enjoy.

Two Scottish immigrants move from New York State to Ontario in the early 1900s, and start a combination brickworks and sheep farm (though, as the title might suggest, we spend a lot more time on the bricks than the sheep). It's relatively slow-paced, and lingers with the friendship between the main characters, the day to day of rural Ontario when life was only just starting to mechanise, and building a small business in the face of bad weather, changing technology, and misfortune. (I suppose this could be classified as a cosy historical, save some of the misfortunes being absolutely heartbreaking.)

I am normally in the "THROW IT IN THE LOCH!" camp when it comes to phenetically written regional accents; however, the voices felt so true here, and the author had clearly put in so much work on period word choices and speech patterns that they ended up working for me here. I appreciated the gentle humour, depth of friendship, and attention to detail.

If I had a quibble, I would say that given how central the relationship between the two men is to the story, and how we get flashbacks of one character's childhood and upbringing up to the start of the main plot, it struck me as very odd that we never got a scene depicting their first meeting, or anything from the formation of their friendship. Would've liked more backstory there.