Colony of Unrequited Dream

An epic portrait of passion and ambition set against the beautiful, brutal landscape of Newfoundland, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams describes the rise of Joey Smallwood, who claws his way up from poverty to become Newfoundland's first premier. Smallwood's fate is inextricably linked with that of his tart-tongued childhood rival and soul mate Sheilagh Fielding, who becomes a brilliant and popular satirist of Smallwood's career. Their unconventional romance ranges from small Canadian fishing towns to New York City, from the harrowing ice floes of the seal hunt to the lavish drawing rooms of colonial governors. And as the decades pass, and Smallwood's successes and failures shape Newfoundland's emerging political destiny, these two characters must confront their frailties and secrets, and their mutual, if doomed, love. Wayne Johnston's widely acclaimed tragicomic elegy for the "colony of unrequited dreams" that is Newfoundland is a masterful tribute to a people and a place, and establishes him as a novelist of profound and manifold gifts.

In this loving memoir Wayne Johnston returns to Newfoundland-the people, the place, the politics-and illuminates his family's story with all the power and drama he brought to his magnificent novel, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. Descendents of the Irish who settled in Ferryland, Lord Baltimore's Catholic colony in Newfoundland, the Johnstons "went from being sea-fearing farmers to sea-faring fishermen." Each generation resolves to escape the hardships of life at sea, but their connection to this fantastically beautiful but harsh land is as eternal as the rugged shoreline, and the separations that result between generations may be as inevitable as the winters they endure. Unfulfilled dreams haunt this family history and make Baltimore's Mansion a thrilling and captivating book.