I grew up in a quiet farming valley in Connecticut, but I moved to a wilderness farm in the maritime provinces of Canada, surrounded by spruce forests and close to the Bay of Fundy. My favourite places are those where there is more sky, seemingly, than land; more birds than people; more wind-blown fields than houses. My favourite books take us to landscapes where people must come to terms with environments whose extreme circumstances are challenges in and of themselves.
By Beth Powning
Growing up on the Bay of Fundy in the 1860s, Azuba Galloway is determined to escape the confines of her town and live at sea. When she captures the heart of Captain Nathaniel Bradstock, she is sure her dreams are about to be realized, only to have pregnancy intervene. But when Azuba becomes embroiled in a scandal, Nathaniel must bring his young family abroad to save his reputation. Azuba gets her wish, but at what price?
Alone in a male world, and juggling the splendor of foreign ports with the terror of the open seas, Azuba must fight to keep her family together. The Sea Captain's Wife will captivate readers and critics alike.
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By ML Stedman
The young couple in The Light Between Oceans live on the barren premises of a lighthouse, in the harsh light of a treeless island. Between the polarities of sea and sky, they evade a moral dilemma. I can feel their quandry as clearly as I can see the glittering waves in an extraordinary place whose beauty cloaks danger.
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By Barbara Kingsolver
Sisters, mother, and father travel to Africa as missionaries. I love the different voices and points of view of the sisters as they hiss and blather and rage about their extreme situation, which becomes inexorably worse. The army ant scene so traumatized a friend of mine who had read this novel that she left her cottage in the middle of the night, since a stream of ants was pouring down the wall. Such is the power of fiction….
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By Sena Jeter Naslund
This book inspired my own writing with its detailed rendering of 19th century life. It has all of my favourite things: lighthouses, ships, horses, buggies, wharves, and whales. “Captain Ahab was neither my first husband or my last.” How can you resist this first sentence? The novel’s massive lighthouse, and the child who has lived there all her life, inform some deep part of my world view.
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By Bernice Morgan
I love this book because I have lived parts of it myself — been shocked by the savage winds of winter, looked wistfully southwards towards the home I left, planted and harvested potatoes with cold fingers— as do the women in Bernice Morgan’s novel about the first immigrants to Newfoundland. This vividly told and emotional novel deserves a much wider readership. Published in 1992, it was made into a film.
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By Gil Adamson
An astonishing book whose main character is known only as “the widow” until far into the narrative, and whose flight across the western wilderness, in 1903, is as lyrical, brutal, and visceral as a reader could want. This is a book whose writing stops you dead, even while you can’t wait to turn the page.
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