New Brunswick

Photo by Leora Winter on Unsplash

 

New Brunswick is one of the three Maritime provinces in Canada, and it is the only province with English and French as its official languages. New Brunswick is home to the The Miramichi River, which many deem the place for best salmon fishing in the world. The city of Saint John boast the steepest street in all Canada, King Street with an incline of 80 feet over only two blocks. Two gigantic roadside attractions pay homage to the region's industry: a gigantic lobster in Shediac (the lobster capital of the world), and a 50-feet tall axe in Nackawic (a town dependent on the logging industry). And just off Deer Island, you can find Old Sow, one of the largest whirlpools in the world. If these facts about New Brunswick caught your attention, I bet you will enjoy the books in the list below. 

Historical Fiction

📚 The Americans Are Coming by Herb Curtis

The Americans Are Coming, the first novel of The Brennen Siding Trilogy, introduces teenagers Dryfly Ramsey and Shadrack Nash, poor and ignorant in the world's terms, but rich in the lore of the woods and the magical Miramichi River. Among the Brennen Siding folk who help them grow up (sometimes none too gently) are Shirley Ramsey, the homely, destitute mother of Dry and his 10 brothers and sisters; Nutbeam, a floppy-eared hermit who falls in love with Shirley; the American salmon anglers buying up the riverfront just as fast as they can; and the local men who guide them in their pursuit of the legendary Atlantic salmon.

📚 Mclean by Allan Donaldson

In this little gem of a novel, author Allan Donaldson depicts the tragedy of a human life oppressed by the residual nightmare of war, as well as the limitations of small-town life in New Brunswick in the mid-1900s. Maclean portrays the life of an alcoholic veteran of World War One, as outlined within a single day in the late summer of 1943. Protagonist John Maclean’s seemingly prosaic search to find his mother a birthday present illustrates his struggle with the obstacles created by war and poverty, themes which plague even his small town in mid-northern New Brunswick. Though the novel’s events appear ordinary, Maclean’s struggle to find work and booze is deepened by a turbulent under story of memory, nostalgia, and loss, as well as the stark impressions of empty fear and senselessness provoked by war. As Maclean clearly illustrates, nothing comes cheaply, be it a birthday present or peace on the world stage, and it is usually the rejects of society who are sacrificed to pay the price for others. Through the use of appropriately sparse, clear prose, the reader is drawn into the perspective of a man that society would usually sooner overlook. The tension and empathy of this point of view makes Maclean a challenging and ultimately fulfilling experience for the reader. 

📚 The Nine Lives of Charlotte Taylor by Sally Armstrong

Charlotte Taylor lived in the front row of history. In 1775, at the young age of twenty, she fled her English country house and boarded a ship to Jamaica with her lover, the family’s black butler. Soon after reaching shore, Charlotte’s lover died of yellow fever, leaving her alone and pregnant in Jamaica. In the sixty-six years that followed, she would find refuge with the Mi’kmaq of what is present-day New Brunswick, have three husbands, nine more children and a lifelong relationship with an aboriginal man. Using a seamless blend of fact and fiction, Charlotte Taylor's great-great-great-granddaughter, Sally Armstrong, reclaims the life of a dauntless and unusual woman and delivers living history with all the drama and sweep of a novel.

Contemporary Fiction

📚 Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richard

When twelve-year-old Sidney Henderson pushes his friend Connie off the roof of a local church in a moment of anger, he makes a silent vow: Let Connie live and I will never harm another soul. At that very moment, Connie stands, laughs, and walks away. Sidney keeps his promise through adulthood despite the fact that his insular, rural community uses his pacifism to exploit him. Sidney's son Lyle, however, assumes an increasingly aggressive stance in defense of his family. When a small boy is killed in a tragic accident and Sidney is blamed, Lyle takes matters into his own hands. In his effort to protect the people he loves—his beautiful and fragile mother, Elly; his gifted sister, Autumn; and his innocent brother, Percy—it is Lyle who will determine his family's legacy.

Literary Fiction

📚 Nights Below Station Street by David Adams Richard

David Adams Richards’ Governor General’s Award-winning novel is a powerful tale of resignation and struggle, fierce loyalties and compassion. This book is the first in Richards’ acclaimed Miramichi trilogy. Set in a small mill town in northern New Brunswick, it draws us into the lives of a community of people who live there, including: Joe Walsh, isolated and strong in the face of a drinking problem; his wife, Rita, willing to believe the best about people; and their teenage daughter Adele, whose nature is rebellious and wise, and whose love for her father wars with her desire for independence. Richards’ unforgettable characters are linked together in conflict, and in articulate love and understanding. Their plight as human beings is one we share.

📚 The Bay of Love and Sorrows by David Adams Richard

Written in taut, penetrating prose, Richards' new novel offers a wide array of unforgettable characters. All are wrestling with issues of integrity, self-preservation, and power in the same close confines of their coastal community, and tragedy is waiting to happen. Home from college for the summer is Karrie Smith, whose deep longing for a more exciting life makes her especially vulnerable to the shady world between the decent and the dark. The summer becomes fraught with misadventures and abrupt changes of fortune, but it is only in the aftermath of a senseless murder that the real truth emerges. In this richly textured tale, The Bay of Love and Sorrows exposes the heart of fierce need and the profligate greed of humankind, and explores the possibility of redemption in whatever circumstances people find themselves. This novel speaks to us, empowers us, and enlightens us as Richards reveals the mist of moral uncertainty and the desperation of small-town life.

📚 Summer Point by Linda McNutt

Sarah is taken to her grandmother's cottage on the East Coast for a weekend with her parents. She has no idea that the connections she makes to the shingled cottage, the sand and the sea -- and the people who live and visit at its shore -- will mark her for the rest of her life. The growth-rings of this source become clear to Sarah as an adult when she brings her new lover to this freighted place and she is able to begin to use her distilled memories towards powerful realizations.

Fantasy

📚 The Hush Sisters by Gerard Collins

Sissy and Ava Hush are estranged, middle-aged sisters with little in common beyond their upbringing in a peculiar manor in downtown St. John's. With both parents now dead, the siblings must decide what to do with the old house they've inherited. Despite their individual loneliness, neither is willing to change or cede to the other's intentions. As the sisters discover the house's dark secrets, the spirits of the past awaken, and strange events envelop them. The Hush sisters must either face these sinister forces together or be forever ripped apart.

In The Hush Sisters, Gerard Collins weaves psychological suspense with elements of the fantastic to craft a contemporary urban gothic that will keep readers spellbound until the novel whispers its startling secrets.

Mystery/Humor

📚 I Am A Truck by Michelle Winters

A tender but lively debut novel about a man, a woman, and their Chevrolet dealer.

Agathe and Rejean Lapointe are about to celebrate their twentieth wedding anniversary when Rejean's beloved Chevy Silverado is found abandoned at the side of the road - with no trace of Rejean. Agathe handles her grief by fondling the shirts in the Big and Tall department at Henderman's Family Apparel and carrying on a relationship with a cigarette survey. As her hope dwindles, Agathe falls in with her spirited coworker Debbie, who teaches Agathe about rock and roll, and with Martin Bureau, the one man who might just know the truth about Rejean's fate.

Reminiscent of 2015 Canada Reads finalist And the Birds Rained Down and Gone Girl, I Am A Truck is a funny and moving portrayal of Acadian love and loyalty.

YA

📚 The Town that Drowned by Riel Nason

Living with a weird brother in a small town can be tough enough. Having a spectacular fall through the ice at a skating party and nearly drowning are grounds for embarrassment. But having a vision and narrating it to the assembled crowd solidifies your status as an outcast. What Ruby Carson saw during that fateful day was her entire town buildings and people floating underwater. Then an orange-tipped surveyor stake turns up in a farmer's field. Another is found in the cemetery. A man with surveying equipment is spotted eating lunch near Pokiok Falls. The residents of Haverton soon discover that a massive dam is being constructed and that most of their homes will be swallowed by the rising water. Suspicions mount, tempers flare, and secrets are revealed. As the town prepares for its own demise, 14-year-old Ruby Carson sees it all from a front-row seat. Set in the 1960s, The Town That Drowned evokes the awkwardness of childhood, the thrill of first love, and the importance of having a place to call home. Deftly written in a deceptively unassuming style, Nason's keen insights into human nature and the depth of human attachment to place make this novel ripple in an amber tension of light and shadow.

Cozy Mystery

📚 The Terrible Tide by Charlotte McLeod

The tiny New Brunswick village was a lifetime away from the world of a New York fashion model. but a freak accident had sent Holly Howe there to recover in seclusion...and to work at the only job she could find---as a servant at Cliff House. Sitting high above the bay, the gloomy mansion was filled with priceless antiques, a bedridden old woman, and things that go bump in the night.

Holly didn't believe in ghosts, but she knew something eerie was happening when the moon was full and the legendary tides came sweeping in from the sea. Who was lurking about the darkened mansion? What was the strange buoy light bobbing off shore? Why was a handsome young craftsman becoming a regular visitor? And why did the ebony eyes of the withered old crone upstairs suddenly stare back at Holly---wide, clear, and luminously gray?

True Crime

📚 The Ballad of Jacob Peck by Debra Komar

On a frigid February evening in 1805, Amos Babcock brutally murdered Mercy Hall. Believing that he was being instructed by God, Babcock stabbed and disembowelled his own sister, before dumping her lifeless body in a rural New Brunswick snowbank.

The Ballad of Jacob Peck is the tragic and fascinating story of how isolation, duplicity, and religious mania turned impoverished, hard-working people violent, leading to a murder and an execution. Babcock was hanged for the murder of his sister, but in her meticulously researched book, Debra Komar shows that itinerant preacher Jacob Peck should have swung right beside him. The mystery lies not in the whodunit, but rather in a lingering question: should Jacob Peck, whose incendiary sermons directly contributed to the killing, have been charged with the murder of Mercy Hall?

In this epic saga, media accounts of what happened in the aftermath of the murder have taken on a life all their own, one built of half-truths, conjecture, and narrative devices designed to titillate, if not inform. A forensic investigation of a crime from the Canadian frontier, the tale of Jacob Peck, Amos Babcock, and Mercy Hall remains as controversial and riveting today as it was more than two hundred years ago.