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At the turn of the nineteenth century, naval officer David Buchan arrives in the Bay of Exploits with orders to establish contact with the Beothuk or "Red Indians," the aboriginal inhabitants of Newfoundland who are on the verge of extinction. When Buchan approaches the area's most influential white settlers, the Peytons, for advice and assistance, he enters a shadowy world of allegiances and old grudges that he can only dimly apprehend. Years later, when a second expedition to the Beothuks' winter camp mounted by the Peytons leads to the kidnapping of an Indian woman and the murder of her husband, Buchan returns to investigate. As the officer attempts to uncover what really happened on the Red Indians' lake, the delicate web of obligation and debt that holds together the Peyton household, and the community of settlers on the northeast shore, slowly unravels.
About this Author
MICHAEL CRUMMEY is author of the memoir Newfoundland: Journey into a Lost Nation; seven books of poetry, including Arguments with Gravity, winner of the Writers' Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award for Poetry; and the short fiction collection Flesh and Blood. His first novel, River Thieves, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and his second novel, The Wreckage, was a finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. His third novel, Galore, won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize (Canada and the Caribbean) and was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award. His fourth novel, Sweetland, was also a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award. His most recent novel, The Innocents, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award. Michael Crummey lives in St. John's, Newfoundland.
Reviews
"Michael Crummey's River Thieves is a novel of exquisite craftsmanship and masterful artistry that should gain the broad attention it so richly deserves: a novel of intricately balanced storytelling and intriguing location but one also where the keen eye of a poet resides within the language. The writing is simple and beautiful, fully textured and gracefully rendered. Crummey has the rare ability to breathe his characters right off the page and into the reader's mind, where they then lodge, living on well past the final page. River Thieves marks the emergence of a powerful, mature talent." --Jeffrey Lent, author of In the Fall
"This multi-faceted jewel of a book is probably the finest Canadian novel of the year. . . . River Thieves is the sort of novel that raises gooseflesh on the reader's arms in its opening pages and doesn't surrender them until well after the covers are closed." --National Post
"It is a novel full of poetic metaphor and memorable images. The language and phrases of the time are richly used, and through meticulous detail it manages to breathe life into past ways. Most of all, it creates a vivid portrait of Newfoundland of another era." --The Globe and Mail
"A stunningly polished and powerful book. . . Crummey' s craftsmanship is masterful." --Maclean's
"River Thieves is a wonderful novel and Michael Crummey is a writer of enormous talent. . . . Michael Crummey writers like an old pro and, not so incidently, also like an old soul, who has borne witness to tragic tendencies of humans for generations, and views them with awe and sadness and a clear-eyed compassion." --Ottawa Citizen
"A rip-roaring adventure tale if ever there was one. . . . An exceptionally accomplished work of historical fiction that revels in the art of storytelling. . . . River Thieves is an auspicious debut for Crummey. His next novel can't come soon enough." --Calgary Herald
"A haunting novel. . . . An engrossing and complex story that feels as authentic as a contemporary eyewitness account." --Elle Canada
"Early into Michael Crummey's first novel, a rip-roaring adventure tale if there ever was one, a character declares `A good story will never disappoint you.' Now isn't that the truth. Certainly there is nothing disappointing about Crummey's first novel, an exceptionally accomplished work of historical fiction that revels in the art of story-telling." --The Calgary Herald
"This is a splendid novel reflective of a particular place and time. Michael Crummey is a tremendously gifted writer." --Alistair MacLeod
"Like David Adams Richards. . . . Crummey favours the minimalist stroke, the revealing detail relied upon to spill its magic gracefully, with tremendous emotional and psychological impact." --Toronto Star
"In the tradition of such contemporary classics as Cold Mountain and In The Fall, this beautifully-written novel is both a stunning adventure story and a profound saga of courage and idealism in an imperfect world. . . . The last of the Beothuks died 175 years ago. But thanks to Michael Crummey, they live on in River Thieves, a novel of great wisdom, great power, and great heart." --Howard Frank Mosher, author of A Stranger in the Kingdom and North Country
"A little-known historical atrocity--the extinction of the Beothuk ("Red") Indians of central Newfoundland--becomes an authentic tragedy in this brilliantly constructed, immensely moving debut novel by an award-winning Canadian poet and short-story writer. . . . There' s a literary renaissance underway just north of us, and Crummey's quite literally astonishing debut novel is one of the brightest jewels in its crown." --Kirkus, April 15, 2002
Praise for Michael Crummey's short fiction:
"In the story 'Serendipity,' which appeared in the 1998 Journey Prize Anthology, 'Crummey brings ephemerally delicate details into chillingly stark relief.'" --The Globe and Mail
"Like David Adams Richards. . . . Crummey favours the minimalist stroke, the revealing detail relied upon to spill its magic, gracefully, with tremendous emotional and psychological impact. Writing from the marrow of the matter, the craftsman intimates we're all card-carrying members of the club of second guesses, that universal sodality allowing each of us to reflect on ways we might have worked harder, played better, loved stronger or stood taller. ... Crummey engages readers from the get-go." --The Toronto Star
"The stories in Flesh and Blood [are] profoundly moving and convincing." --The National Post
"Like the pauses in a piece of music without which the notes would make no sense, the silences between the parents, children, spouses and lovers in Crummey's stories shape the meaning of their actions, desires and connection to each other. . . . Crummey's stories, while honouring hard lives lived with patience, also have a quality of compacted richness." --The Kingston Whig-Standard
Praise for Michael Crummey's poetry:
"This is one of the finest first books I've come across. . . . If Alistair MacLeod wrote poetry instead of stories, he might have written these poems." --Quill & Quire
"Michael Crummey's Hard Light will catch and hold you in a place where the ocean is something you recognize, and the lives of those he writes about have something to say directly to you about laughter, survival, suffering, redemption... When you've found an author with the kind of power Crummey has, one of the first things to do is to head back to the bookstore looking for more." --Atlantic Books Today
"It's a rare writer who can fashion a vivid memorial to an all-but-vanished way of life; it's a rarer one who can excavate the vernacular and raise it to planes so poignantly and viscerally true, the exquisite beauty of the apparently ordinary shimmers with a matter-of-fact clarity guaranteed to curl your toes." --The Toronto Star
"The pieces [in Hard Light] reflect artistic intelligence in their shape and rhythm and in their structural relation to the book as a whole. . . . Each piece is resonant. . . . Rich in specific detail, uttered in the voices of those who've lived the stories, these miniatures reveal a world. . . . Crummey transforms documentary into art. . . . With Hard Light, Michael Crummey has made a significant contribution to our literature . . . creating a book that honors the past yet is thoroughly contemporary in its strategies and vision." --The Sunday Telegram
"Solid, satisfying, scrupulous about the salty details of working lives. . . . Hard Light is solidly anchored on The Rock." --The Globe and Mail
"The eloquent simplicity goes straight to the heart." --Patrick Lane
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