|
It is 1965, and when a large corporation takes over the mill,
and workers attempt to unionize, Alf’s actions inadvertently set
in motion a series of events that will reverberate far into the
future and burden him with an unspoken shame. This is also the
year when his eldest son, Joe, falls headlong for a girl he first
glimpses on a bridge – and his world is overturned by the passion
and uncertainty of young love. The bittersweet story of Joe and
Anna is juxtaposed against his father’s deepening role in the
tensions building at the mill and his unsettling connection with
a local Native woman, Lucille Boileau. Meanwhile, Alf’s wife,
Margaret, must reconcile her middle-class English upbringing with
her blue-collar reality, as her marriage is undermined by forces
she cannot name.
Set over the course of a single year, the novel reaches back to
the past – to Alf’s haunting memories of the Second World War
and his brother’s death; to the stories of the town’s founder,
Abraham Shade, and those of the eccentric river man Johnny North.
Bemrose weaves an intricate, absolutely spellbinding narrative.
Besides the five members of the Walker family, he introduces a
large cast of characters, including Archie Mann, Joe’s sad and
inspired teacher; Liz McVey, the wilful daughter of the town’s
richest man; union organizer Malachi Doyle; and Anna Macrimmon,
worldly, gifted, mysterious, who turns Joe’s world upside down.
In The Island Walkers, Bemrose creates a world
entire that immediately draws us in. His portrait of the town
of Attawan and of the community of people who inhabit it is magnificently
drawn, alive with detailed, evocative description. The sense of
place, the characters themselves, their conflicts and deepest
longings, we cannot help but recognize as our own.
Dark, intensely moving, beautifully imagined, this remarkable
debut follows one family to the very bottom of their night, only
to confirm, in the end, life’s regenerative power. Richly textured,
at once intimate and epic in scope, The Island Walkers
signals the emergence of a new novelist of vision and rare accomplishment.
PRAISE
“A beautiful, elegiac novel about place,
family, and community. A profoundly moving book.” —
Guy Vanderhaeghe
“The storyline is taut, almost unbearably so at times, from the
opening pages. The small-town class divisions that, together with
Joe and Anna’s personal demons, ravage their romance, are expertly
— and agonizingly — evoked. Alf’s struggle to steer
a middle course between ambition and betrayal is so clearly doomed
that the novel’s overriding question soon becomes, not what will
happen — disaster is inevitable — but how will Alf face
it, with what reserves of courage and integrity?… A finely written
novel.…” — Maclean’s
“We don’t have many novels that cross generations like this
and give us both the interior of lives, a sense of social history,
and an incredibly strong sense of place. The story is so ambitious
and complex, and yet simply, beautifully told. The whole thing flows
along like a river, a real page-turner with Dantean echoes and lyrical
insights that are often breathtaking –- a great accomplishment.”
— Marni Jackson
“The Island Walkers is a beautiful, complex, well-wrought
work.” — Roy MacSkimming
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
John Bemrose is well known as an
arts journalist whose articles and profiles have appeared regularly
in Maclean’s, where he is a contributing editor. He has written
for CBC Radio’s Ideas, for the National Film Board, for the
Globe and Mail, and for numerous other publications. He has
written a play, Mother Moon, produced by the National Arts
Centre, and published two poetry collections. Bemrose grew up in
Paris, Ontario, the place that inspired the setting for The
Island Walkers. John Bemrose has lived in Toronto since
1970, where he is at work on his second novel. |