MacAskill has been assigned by his Bishop to a remote parish on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia and ordered to maintain a low profile.

MacIntyre, a native of Cape Breton, released the novel amidst the ongoing sexual abuse scandal in Antigonish diocese in Nova Scotia.

Both The Long Stretch and The Bishop's Man were set on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia where MacIntyre lived as a child.

As a child, MacIntyre was raised by an Irish-Catholic mother and attended church regularly where the local priest inspired him to consider entering the priesthood.

[1] The Bishop's Man was published at the same time as a $15 million settlement was reached in the sexual abuse scandal in Antigonish diocese in Nova Scotia.

Evidence later emerged that the principal offender, Bishop Raymond Lahey may have similarly assumed the role of a fixer during the sexual abuse scandal in St. John's archdiocese in Newfoundland in 1989 when he served under then-archbishop Alphonsus Liguori Penney.

Part of MacAskill's job in these situations was to assuage angry parents, to tell them it was no use contacting the police, and that the church would punish the rapist, all the while knowing that they would simply be moved to a different parish instead.

In the present, MacAskill continues attempting to reach out to Danny, suspecting that his predecessor, Brendan Bell, now married to a woman, had molested him.

Shortly after though he re-contacts MacAskill to inform him that there was another suicide in British Columbia with affidavits saying that the man who killed himself had been molested by Father Roddie.

Though MacAskill gives MacLeod no information he begins to drink more heavily causing him to behave in improper ways which include kissing a former acquaintance and stealing liquor.

His behaviour is eventually noted by the bishop who sends him to rehab near Toronto, a place where MacAskill knew he often sent other deviants.

[9] In the Quill & Quire, Quebec writer Paul Gessell said that he found the characters to be "very credible" and "complex" but concluded that "at times, the plot is convoluted and the back-and-forth chronology gets rather tiresome.