On Oprah’s Summer Reading List for 2010
Howard Norman, widely regarded as one of this country’s finest novelists, returns to the mesmerizing fictional terrain of his major books—The Bird Artist, The Museum Guard, and The Haunting of L—in this erotically charged and morally complex story set during WWII.
Orphaned by the sudden suicides of both his parents (who discovered they were in love with the same woman), seventeen-year-old Wyatt Hillyer is taken in by his aunt and uncle in the small town of Middle Economy, Novia Scotia, where he is apprenticed to his uncle's toboggan business and falls in love with his ravishing adopted cousin, Tilda. Setting in motion the novel’s chain of life-altering passions is the arrival of German student Hans Mohring, carrying only a satchel. Actual historical incidents, including a German U-boat’s sinking of the Nova Scotia-Newfoundland ferry Caribou, lend intense narrative power to Norman’s uncannily layered story of wartime perfidy and prejudice. Tilda's feelings for Hans stir up tensions that will test the bonds of love, family, and community to its limits.
Wyatt’s personal account of the astonishing events leading up to his fathering of a beloved daughter spills out twenty-one years later. It’s a confession that speaks profoundly of the mysteries of human character in wartime and is directed, with both despair and hope, to an audience of one. An utterly stirring novel, this is Howard Norman at his celebrated best.
