Kevin Major St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada E-Mail

Gaffer
ISBN: 0-385-25667-1, Doubleday Canada, $24.95

	The Story:	Caustic, poetic, profoundly moving, Gaffer jackknifes through five hundred years of Newfoundland history, and lunges ahead through fifty more. The young gaffer at its centre is tormented by the death of his father aboard a doomed offshore rig. He refuses to stand idle and watch his outport home collapse to rubble. Obsessively pulled to the sea, the boy transforms himself into a creature able to take to the depths of the ocean, and swim freely across tide and time. There he confronts denizens of the island's past, from Cabot to Bardot. And it is there he is granted a view of its blackened future. Kevin Major spins the language and legends of Newfoundland into a rawly distinct narrative.
Reviews	Globe and Mail	"bold and imaginative… Major's fantastic rant ought to be heeded by all people on the planet…"
	Atlantic Books Today:	"...Newfoundland's premier writer is proposing a refreshing literary form that probes both the old historical record and fantasies of the future."
Excerpt		"As the sun's rays flickered at the distant edge of the sea, he stood on shore lathering his bare self with the seal fat that had rendered to oil in his uncle's shed. A thick rancid grease to stave off the cold and make supple his leather skin. He worked it into every crease and hollow, even about his head, spitting it away when it touched his lips. Ran what seeped between his fingers through his hair, slicking it black and shiny, flat to his head. He donned trunks to streamline him. Stood, hands overhead sharpened to an arrow, tautly poised upon a rock, the carved youth of a man aimed toward the swirl of the highest tide."