The Adversary

An enthralling novel about the corruption of power and the power of corruption from the award-winning, bestselling author of The Innocents

＂POTENT...A VIBRANT HISTORICAL NARRATIVE＂--The New Yorker

＂A FLAWLESSLY CRAFTED NARRATIVE＂ --Wall Street Journal

＂MASTERPIECE＂ --Publisher’s Weekly (Starred Review)

＂CEASELESSLY ENTERTAINING＂ --Kirkus (Starred Review)

＂ONE OF OUR BEST WRITERS＂ --Booklist (Starred Review)

In an isolated outport on Newfoundland’s northern coastline, Abe Strapp is about to marry the daughter of a rival merchant to cement his hold on the shore when the Widow Caines arrives to throw the wedding and Abe’s plans into chaos.

That ruthless act of sabotage is the opening salvo in a battle between the man and woman who own Mockbeggar’s largest mercantile firms, each fighting for the scarce resources of the north Atlantic fishery, each seeking a measure of revenge on the person they despise most in the world. As their unshakeable animosity spirals further each year into vendettas and violence, the community is increasingly divided and even the innocents in Mockbeggar find themselves forced to take sides, with devastating consequences.

Through merciless seasons of uncertainty and want, through predatory storms and pandemics and marauding privateers, it is the human heart that reveals itself to be the most formidable and unpredictable adversary for each person drawn, inevitably and helplessly, into that endless feud.

Compulsively readable and uncompromising, The Adversary is a masterful evocation of a lost time, and a shadowed mirror to our modern politics of grievance and retribution.

MICHAEL CRUMMEY is an award-winning poet and storyteller. Crummey was born in Buchans, a mining town in the interior of Newfoundland. He is the bestselling author of five critically acclaimed novels, The Innocents, River Thieves, The Wreckage, Galore, and Sweetland, as well as five collections of poetry. His novels have won or been shortlisted for many prizes, including the Giller Prize, the Governor-General’s Award, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and his books have sold more than 225,000 copies in North America. He lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.