The Newfoundland Writers’ Guild is essentially an open writer’s group with monthly meetings and yearly retreats (click here to learn more), with members as notable as Bernice Morgan, Libby Creelman, Helen Porter, and M.T. Dohaney, among others.
In 2009, both Trudy Morgan-Cole and Tina Chaulk published novels, and both have been very well-received. Trudy’s By the Rivers of Brooklyn is one of the most talked-about novels of 2009 here in Newfoundland, and twice in the last month I’ve walked past strangers (at bus stops and coffee shops) looking more than enthralled in Tina’s funny-sad romp of a novel, A Few Kinds of Wrong. (and I could certainly relate: the more poignant passages in Tina’s novel really are enthralling and very well written.)
Below is a description of each novel, as well as what a fellow Writers’ Guild member and The Telegram critic Joan Sullivan had to say about each of these novels:
On Morgan-Cole’s By the Rivers off Brooklyn
“One of the most satisfying novels I’ve ever read. [It] establishes her as a writer to be reckoned with. I literally could not put it down.”
- Helen Porter, award-winning author of january, february, june or July
In the 1920s, Jim, Bert and Rose Evans all move from Newfoundland to Brooklyn, New York, in search of work and a better life, leaving their sister Annie back home in St. John’s. By the Rivers of Brooklyn traces the story of the Evans family across two countries and three generations, exploring the hopes, passions and heartbreaks of those who went away and those who stayed behind, transforming into fiction the experience of the 75,000 first- and second-generation Newfoundlanders who once lived in Brooklyn, New York.
“This novel is both meaty and delicate; you can dig right into it, and still find yourself savouring turns of plot, turns of phrase … The writing is deft and enjoyable.”
- Joan Sullivan, The Telegram
On Chaulk’s A Few Kinds of Wrong
“A book that engages the reader in a subject rarely treated in modern fiction — the shattering, unreasoned grief of a daughter when her beloved father dies. Tina Chaulk has a talent for getting inside the always quirky and often perverse sensibility of her protagonist, a young woman coming to terms with flawed memories, misunderstood relationships and a reinterpretation of family history.”
-Bernice Morgan, award-winning author of Cloud of Bone and Random Passage.
Mechanic Jennifer Collins is a woman in a man’s world, but since her father’s sudden death her world has been falling apart. Now she’s in a losing battle, risking everything to cling to the past while everyone else moves forward. In A Few Kinds of Wrong, Tina Chaulk takes us into the garage and tells the poignant story of Jennifer, her pain, her loves, and her coming to terms with reality.
“It is good solid story with unexpected yet authentic twists, and people you are interested in. A book like this is why people read.”
-Joan Sullivan, The Telegram
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