The Colony Of Unrequited Dreams

Name: The Colony Of Unrequited Dreams
Brand: Vintage Canada
SKU: 9780676972153-PRUSDTR-US
Price: 144.0 HKD
Availability: OutOfStock

Wayne Johnston (Author) ... more

Edition: CA - Paperback / softback

Variant

Price:

HK$144.00 HK$220.00

Stock:

Out of stock

Quantity:

Product Info

English • Age Adult - Adult

576 pages • 5.2 x 8.0 x 1.21 in

Approx. weight: 0.94 lb

Publication date: 07 Sep,1999

Barcode: 9780676972153 • Vintage Canada

More books in English for Age Adult - Adult

Biographical fiction / autobiographical fiction
Historical fiction
Fiction: general and literary

Share this product

By: Wayne Johnston

The Colony of Unrequited Dreams is a novel about Newfoundland that centres on the story of Joe Smallwood, the true-life controversial political figure who ushered the island through confederation with Canada and became its first premier. Narrated from Smallwood's perspective, it voices a deep longing on the part of the Newfoundlander to do something significant, “commensurate with the greatness of the land itself”.

Smallwood, born in 1900, is the first of thirteen children raised from the ‘scruff’ of Newfoundland, as opposed to the ‘quality’. Smallwood seems an unlikely hero to fulfil what he sees as his mission: to transform the ‘old lost land’, with its lack of identity, into ‘the new found land.’ With perseverance and determination, he sets about the task, becoming a journalist for a socialist newspaper in New York and then a union leader, at one point walking the 700-mile railway track across the island to sell memberships to the section-men living in shacks. He sees beyond his unpromising background, the cold and unrelenting hardship and isolation, envisioning a proud and great destiny. Eventually, a politician full of wild moneymaking schemes, he is swept into a world of intrigues and the machinations of the power elite, just as Newfoundland must decide whether to become an independent country or to join Canada.

In counterpoint to the earnest endeavours of Smallwood is the Dorothy Parker-like figure of his lifelong friend, Sheilagh Fielding. Fielding becomes an acerbic newspaper columnist, a hard drinker with a sharp tongue who shares a strange love-hate relationship with Smallwood.

Smallwood’s chronicle of his development from poor schoolboy to Father of the Confederation is a story full of epic journeys and thwarted loves, travelling from the ice floes of the seal hunt to New York City, in a style reminiscent at times of John Irving, Robertson Davies and Charles Dickens. Absorbing and entertaining, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams provides us with a deep perspective on the relationship between private lives and what comes to be understood as history.