Baltimore's Mansion

Baltimore's MansionThis intimate story of family and place the perfect book to follow the success of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams will join The Danger Tree and Angela's Ashes on the shelf reserved for most valued memoirs. Baltimore's Mansion a story of the vivid, moving, hilarious machinations of three generations of fathers and sons will speak to readers everywhere about the hardships, blessings and power of family relationships. Charlie Johnston is the famed

This intimate story of family and place - the perfect book to follow the success of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams - will join The Danger Tree and Angela's Ashes on the shelf reserved for most valued memoirs.

Baltimore's Mansion - a story of the vivid, moving, hilarious machinations of three generations of fathers and sons - will speak to readers everywhere about the hardships, blessings and power of family relationships. Charlie Johnston is the famed blacksmith of Ferryland, a Catholic colony founded by Lord Baltimore in the 1620s on the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland. But he must spend the first cold hours of every working day fishing at sea with his sons, one of whom, Wayne's father Arthur, vows that as an adult he will never look to the sea for his livelihood. In the heady months leading to the referendum that results in Newfoundland being "inducted" into Canada, Art leaves the island, parting on mysterious terms with Charlie who dies while he's away, and is plunged into a lifelong battle with the personal demons that haunted the end of their relationship. Years later, Wayne prepares to leave at the same age his father was when he said good-bye, and old patterns threaten to repeat themselves.

In this year that commemorates the 50th anniversary of Newfoundland as a province, there will be no book that captures, for all time, both the seductive spirit of the Rock and the universal spirit of family (no matter how delightfully eccentric) like Baltimore's Mansion.