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Within a bend in the Attawan River lies the Island, a small neighbourhood of white-washed houses and vine-freighted fences, black willows and decaying sheds. It is here that Alf Walker, a fixer in the local textile mill like his father before him, lives with his family.
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.
About this Author
John Bemrose's first novel, The Island Walkers, was a national bestseller and a finalist for The Giller Prize. Bemrose is also well known as an arts journalist whose articles and profiles have appeared regularly in Maclean's, where he is a contributing editor. In the past, 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 also written a play, Mother Moon, produced by the National Arts Centre, and has published two poetry collections. His second novel is The Last Woman. Bemrose grew up in Paris, Ontario, the place that inspired the setting for The Island Walkers.
Reviews
"A beautiful, elegiac novel about place, family, and community. A profoundly moving book."
--Guy Vanderhaeghe
"As Margaret Laurence staked out a world, Manawaka, in her novels and David Adams Richards has mined the Miramichi, Bemrose has created the vivid community of Attawan to tell an archetypal tale."
--Halifax Chronicle-Herald
"An astonishing debut, a big and breathtaking family novel that is both understated and passionate."
--Booklist
"[An] extraordinary debut novel. . . . Encompassing, bountiful, beautiful."
--The Globe and Mail
"A great reading experience, and Bemrose has now become a fiction writer to watch."
--W.P. Kinsella, Books in Canada
"A clear-eyed eulogy for a town and way of life that is gone forever."
--Sandra Martin, The Globe and Mail
"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 ambitious, 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."
--Marni Jackson
"A powerful debut novel."
--Library Journal
"The Island Walkers is thick with natural beauty and social insight. . . . A profoundly sensitive portrayal of a family's efforts to find its way through the tangled threads of desire and nobility, guilt and love."
--Christian Science Monitor
"As fine as any novel you will read this year."
--New York Sun
"Richly textured and multilayered. . . . Masterful. . . . A beautifully realized and emotionally resonant novel that stays with you long after you turn the last page."
--Kitchener-Waterloo Record
"[An] accomplished first novel."
--Publishers Weekly
"Rhythmical prose, a strong sense of physical place and a restrained, moving atmosphere of mourning for the past."
--National Post
"A finely wrought first novel."
--Kirkus Reviews
"A compelling human story. . . . [This] beautifully crafted debut novel should earn Bemrose a place in the Canlit pantheon."
--Edmonton Journal
"The book's sense of place, its sense of the acceleration of time between generations, its sudden, surprising insights, give the sprawling story its impressive weight. A riveting read."
--London Free Press
"Bemrose has a talent for capturing the sad lyricism of ordinary lives. . . . Bemrose's poetic touch finds beauty in obscure corners and grandeur in small victories."
--Baltimore Sun
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