I read this book way before my blogging days but I think that it is worth a mention for the letter “J” of the Historical Fiction Alphabet Challenge.

Wayne Johnston is a Canadian author,  Here is the book description:
In 1949, Joseph Smallwood became the first premier of the newly federated Canadian province of Newfoundland. Predictably, and almost immediately, his name retreated to the footnotes of history. And yet, as Wayne Johnston makes plain in his epic and affectionate fifth novel, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, Smallwood’s life was endearingly emblematic, an instance of an extraordinary man emerging at a propitious moment. The particular charm of Johnston’s book, however, lies not merely in unveiling a career that so seamlessly coincided with the burgeoning self-consciousness of Newfoundland itself, but in exposing a simple truth–namely, that history is no more than the accretion of lived lives.
Born into debilitating poverty, Smallwood is sustained by a bottomless faith in his own industry. His unabashed ambition is to “rise not from rags to riches, but from obscurity to world renown.” To this end, he undertakes tasks both sublime and baffling–walking 700 miles along a Newfoundland railroad line in a self-martyring union drive; narrating a homespun radio spot; and endlessly irritating and ingratiating himself with the Newfoundland political machine. His opaque and constant incitement is an unconsummated love for his childhood friend, Sheilagh Fielding. Headstrong and dissolute, she weaves in and out of Smallwood’s life like a salaried goad, alternately frustrating and illuminating his ambitions. Smallwood is harried as well by Newfoundland’s subtle gravity, a sense that he can never escape the tug of his native land, since his only certainty is the island itself–that “massive assertion of land, sea’s end, the outer limit of all the water in the world, a great, looming, sky-obliterating chunk of rock.”
Before I read this book I knew nothing about Newfoundland’s history nor politics.  I really enjoyed this book and the characters in it.  The story was excellent.  Because I thought that it was a bit too detailed in politics, it did grad in parts.  However, overall this book was a great introduction to Newfoundland and I really cared about the characters in it.

4/5

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