Blackstrap Hawco: Said to Be About a Newfoundland Family

As the end of the 20th century nears, the Hawco family's bloodlines have grown tainted and confused. Men fail their families through enforced idleness, and the once-vivid ghosts of their ancestors have slipped into murk, forgotten along with the rest of history. Blackstrap Hawco is a defiant man born with little more than a body and spirit that refuse to give up, and the menacing strength of pride. For the Hawcos of Newfoundland, was it not ever so? From the arrivals of the indentured Irish to the Victorian drawing rooms of the English merchants, from the perilous adventures of the seal hunt to the raucous iron ore mines, from a notorious disaster at sea to the relocation of outport communities, the Hawco story might be all the family has left. But as Blackstrap Hawco?a novel that will consume in its dazzling swirl of voices, legends, and beautiful hearsay?testifies, a story this haunting, this powerful, might just be enough.

Kenneth J. Harvey?is the author of?Inside and The Town That Forgot How to Breathe as well as several short story collections, including Shack and The Flesh So Close.