Quill & Quire (Canada's Magazine of Book News and Reviews)
July, 2008
★ starred review
"Blackstrap Hawco is in every way a large novel: large in scope, large in ambition, and large in achievement."
"The novel, which includes passages lifted verbatim from the author’s previous short stories, as well as historical journal entries, newspaper articles, and the like, exists in the interstices between fiction and history, and it calls into question the very nature of narrative itself. 'Because they do not want the truth,' one character muses late in the novel, 'they want the story.' What Harvey has provided is a story that acts as a kind of Möbius strip, folding in on itself until history and legend become all but indistinguishable." - Steven W. Beattie