Writers from the Rock

Having just returned from a trip to Newfoundland, today we look at those wonderful writers who hail from our eastern-most province. Often defined by a deep connection to the rugged coastal landscape, Newfoundland literature has a rich oral storytelling tradition with themes of isolation, survival, and community resilience. It blends dark realism with the Rock’s sharp humour, folklore, and distinct regional voices.
 
Michael Crummey
Known for his poetic, gritty novels set in outports and small, historical Newfoundland.
River Thieves is set in the first years of the 1800s when the British Royal Navy is tasked with travelling through the heart of Newfoundland in search of the Beothuk people. A beautifully written story of loss, love, land, family, and a cruelly-treated people. Part adventure tale, part historical account, and part meditation on place.
The Wreckage, a story of love crossed by the blindness of faith and fate is brought to us in two halves. Set during and after WWII, the story is an epic, yet twisted, romance on the shores of Newfoundland’s fishing villages.
Galore spans two centuries with dozens of characters. Set in rural backwaters, it chronicles generations of people eking out a living and tied together by secrets and love.
The Innocents is a stark, haunting story of an orphaned brother and sister surviving by their wits on a remote, barren cove. Crummey uses “outport” dialogue adding to the sense of isolation and ignorance of the characters. Gritty, yet poetic, Crummey tells a powerful tale not soon to be forgotten.
Sweetland is a powerful exploration of the resettlement theme. When the federal government decides to relocate a remote, dying island community, Moses Sweetland refuses to go. Against bitter weather, lashing storms and phantom ghosts of long-gone family and friends, Sweetland tries to tough it out alone. Truly a great character in one of the most vivid settings you’ll ever read.
The Adversary is a dark, foggy novel about power, corruption religion, sibling rivalry gone crazy, storms, pandemics, pirates, and of course, the cod.
 
Wayne Johnston
Johnston is best known for The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, a fictionalized epic about Joey Smallwood, the Premier who brought Newfoundland into Canadian Confederation, capturing the political heartbreak and identity crisis of the island.
The Navigator of New York is set against the background of the tumultuous rivalry between Lieutenant Peary and Dr. Cook to get to the North Pole at the beginning of the 19th century, it is also the story of a young man’s quest for his origins. Weaves fact and fiction with a haunting, eloquent voice.
The Custodian of Paradise brings back Johnston’s memorable character, Sheilagh Fielding, as she retreats from the world to a wild island populated by horses and dogs.
A World Elsewhere is a sweeping tale of ambition, remorse and hope, in Johnston’s original territory of St. John’s Newfoundland.
The Son of a Certain Woman is Johnston’s funniest, sexiest novels, controversial, wise and generous.
The Mystery of Right & Wrong is a fictionalized account of Johnston’s wife’s family. This book should come with trigger warnings!
 
Lisa Moore
Hailing from St. John’s, Moore is acclaimed for her sharp, contemporary novels and short stories.
Alligator gives dramatic birth to a new kind of fiction: North Atlantic Gothic. The story moves with the swiftness of a gator in attack mode through the lives of a group of brilliantly rendered characters in contemporary St. John's. Its denizens jostle each other in uneasy arabesques of desire, greed, lust, and ambition, juxtaposed with a yearning for purity, depth, and redemption.
The novel, February, is based on a true Canadian tragedy. On Valentine’s night in 1982, out on the Atlantic Ocean off Newfoundland, the oil drilling rig Ocean Ranger capsized and sank during a violent storm. All eighty-four men on board the rig died in the frigid waters, some apparently within hailing distance of a vessel which was unable to rescue them. The families of the dead learned of the disaster from news accounts on the radio; the oil company made no attempt to notify them. It is a keenly observant, uncomfortably bleak, very believable portrait of a woman and her family and their reaction to the brutally unexpected loss of their son, husband and father.
 
Joan Clark
Latitudes of Melt is a beautifully written story of a baby picked up on an ice flow off the shores of Newfoundland in 1912 and the family who raise her as their own. The unravelling of Aurora, the mysterious girl with different coloured eyes and white hair, spans decades and continents while exploring shipwrecks, fairies, icebergs, love and loss. It is also a beautiful evocation of Newfoundland’s southern shore.
 
Donna Morrisey
Born in the northern community of The Beaches, Morrisey has written six national best-sellers and prize-winning novels.
Kit’s Law is based in an isolated outport in the 1950s. Nothing penetrates this antiquated existence, as television, telephones, cars, even roads, elude the villagers and the only visitors are fog-bound fishermen. Here, outside of Haire’s Hollow, lives 14-year old Kit Pitman with her mentally handicapped mother Josie — both women cared for and protected by the indomitable Lizzie, Kit’s grandmother. The three live a life of some hardship, but much love, punctuated by the change of seasons in the isolated gully where they live.
Rage the Night is at once the intimate tale of one man's quest to discover the truth of his birth and a riveting account of a real-life Newfoundland tragedy from 1914 when a deathbed confession reveals the truth about twenty-year-old, Roan’s birth and his journey to discover his identity.
 
After having travelled throughout the province, chatting with people and enjoying their hospitality, I’m struck by the dichotomy between the often-bleak nature of their literature and the lovely humour and lightheartedness of the people. Shaped by isolation, an unforgiving landscape, and centuries of economic and social hardship, Newfoundland’s literature directly reflects its unique historical and geographical reality. The people today are deeply connected to their history and have a profound connection to home, unseen (by me, at least) anywhere else in Canada. They know where they come from and they celebrate their history through humour and music. Their stories, while often dark, are balanced by a sharp, deadpan, sense of humour. Newfoundland culture reflects two sides of the coin: tragedy and comedy. Shakespeare would understand.
 
Am thinking another trip to this beautiful island is in order to explore it further.
 
And in the meantime, happy reading!
Joni