A claim to fame to get your attention: Both Downhill Chance and Sylvanus Now won the prestigious, 15-thousand dollar Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, and that’s only getting started on her remarkable writing career.
Halifax’s Donna Morrissey grew up in Newfoundland, where she is so adored there is a commemorative plaque in her hometown of Beaches. All four of her novels have been remarkably well received by readers, critics, and award jurors alike, and now, if you’ve missed out on any of them, Penguin has just re-designed and re-launched them all for you. They’re striking, enticing, and have special features . If you haven’t read any or all of her novels yet, you are missing out, and now is the time. Her works are an international success, having been sold into Japan, Germany, Sweeden, UK, the US …
Kit’s Law
Selected Recognition:
Winner of the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award Prize
Winner of the The American Library Association’s Alex Award
Winner of the Winifred Holtby Memorial Bequest
Shortlisted for the Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, Chapters/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the Atlantic Provinces Booksellers Choice.
Set in a very isolated, roadless Newfoundland outport in the 1950s, Kit’s Law is the story of fatherless fourteen-year-old Kit Pitmann, who, after her grandmother’s sudden death, becomes responsible for her mentally handicapped mother. The three women led a harsh life, but had each other’s love to get them through it. When her grandmother dies, Kit struggles to fend off village busybodies who try to tear her and her mother apart, particularly the Reverend Ropson, who, from the pulpit, decries Josie as the “Gully Tramp.”
“Beautiful … with a poet’s attention to sound … startling, vivid, and expertly crafted.”
- Booklist
“An affecting, haunting, memorable tale by a true, effortless storyteller.”
- Sunday Tribune (Dublin)
Downhill Chance
Winner of the 2003 Thomas Head Raddall Fiction Prize
Downhill Chance is a story of two Newfoundland families during wartime — the Osmonds and the Gales — brought together by love, yet torn apart by fear and secrets. Job Gale joins the army, leaving his distraught wife and two young daughters behind. When Job returns, he is tortured with a secret shame that shrouds over the family. His young daughter Clair escapes by becoming a teacher at nearby Rocky Head, then falls in love with Luke Osmond, who courts her from afar with a story that reveals his own secret sorrow. Morrissey blends melodrama, gritty realism, and a flair for the comic in this unique novel. At its core is the unravelling of secrets — and what truth ultimately brings to the people who so memorably inhabit these pages.
“So emotionally taut and brilliantly written that you won’t have time to breathe until you leaf over the last page.”
- The Hamilton Spectator
“Downhill Chance is the sort of gothic fiction made familiar by the Brontë sisters, a Wuthering Heights of the craggy coast of Newfoundland.”
- The London Free Press
Sylvanus Now
Selected Recognition:
Winner of the Thomas Head Raddall Fiction Award
Winner of the Atlantic Book Awards Booksellers’ Choice Award
Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize
Sylvanus Now is a young fisherman of great charm and strength. His youthful desires are simple: the fine-boned beauty Adelaide. Adelaide, however, has other dreams. She longs to escape the sea, the fish, and the stultifying community in which she lives. Set against the love story of Addie and Sylvanus is the sea on the cusp of cataclysmic change. Caught between his desire to please his wife and his strongly independent nature, Sylvanus must decide what path his future will take.
‘Deft and deliriously romantic … Acute and bleakly funny.”
-The National Post
“There are detailed descriptions in this novel which are dazzlingly authentic. Both physical and emotional landscapes are charted with exquisite care. A splendidly unique novel.”
- Alistair MacLeod, award-winning author of No Great Mischief
What They Wanted
Shortlisted for the 2009 Atlantic Independent Booksellers’ Choice Award
A Globe and Mail bestseller and top book of 2008
After Sylvie’s father’s heart attack, long-simmering family tensions rise to the fore, and she must confront her estrangement from her mother. She fevers for the larger world, both for herself and her vulnerable brother Chris, who is blessed with artistic talent but frustrates his dreams by going to work on an Albertan oil rig. Sylvie’s mother is furious with Sylvie for enticing Chris away. When Sylvie and her brother journey west to the booming oilfields to earn quick, hard cash, and struggle to find their way, the past impinges on the present until tragedy strikes and their lives are forever changed. Yet, out of pain and piercing grief, there is reconciliation and renewal. This is a novel about guilt, responsibility, tragedy, and the enduring ties of family, this is vintage Donna Morrissey.
“A compassionate, insightful, and gripping look at a family dragged through changing times … grief is so movingly presented that readers will feel it as their own.”
- Winnipeg Free Press
“Donna Morrissey is an absolute terrific original.”
- David Adams Richards, multi-award-winning author of Mercy Among the Children
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