The reviewer was a childhood resident of
Bay Roberts, Newfoundland, and remembers
the great electoral battles of 1948 and 1949, though he was just
ten years old at the time. He remembers numerous radio broadcasts
by Joey; 'My fellow Newfoundlanders...' , the huge Valdmanis
disappointment, etc., etc. So he found Johnston's story gripping as
a novel and a compelling reminder of days
long gone. The reviewer's father, George Russell, trod the tracks
in the
early 1940's as an itinerant salesman,
encountering many of the same conditions
Smallwood had some years earlier.
Johnston has created, quite apart from any personal involvement in
the historical reality, a masterpiece which, together with such
other works as Proulx's 'The Shipping News', bode well to create a
defining literature for the province. Nevertheless, as always when
real history and imaginative fiction are combined, the book leaves
one more than a little confused and troubled. How many of these
events were real? OK