The Colony of Unrequited Dreams — Wayne Johnston

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.