Closer By Sea is the debut novel from Perry Chafe, producer and writer of hit TV shows including Republic of Doyle and Son of a Critch, showcasing Eastern Canada.
In 1991, on a small island off the coast of Newfoundland, twelve year old Pierce is learning to live with the death of his father. Like most men of the island, and the generations before, he rose before dawn to fish off Perigo Island, just sixteen miles long and half as wide, in the frigid waters of the North Atlantic - his boat was recovered, his body never found. The women work the fish processing plant, and the kids in the summer take care of themselves. Armed with knives and buckets, they vie for jobs at the wharf, when the long haul boats return low in the water, heavy with cod. Cutting out cod tongues is messy work, but can bring $1 a pound - not bad for kids in 1991.
It is just him and his mom now, living in a saltbox-style clapboard house, but he has his good friends Thomas and Bennie, and this year Bennie's cousin Emily from New York City for the summer, who quickly becomes one of the gang, riding their ATV's around the island and watching the tall blue-white icebergs floating down from Greenland.
That was the year a local girl went missing. Pierce had befriended enigmatic Anna three years ago - she was twelve and her parents were divorced, big news on a small island.
Although he only saw her a few times since, he is shocked to hear she has disappeared.
Perhaps she ran away again.
Pierce convinces the gang the gruff newcomer Solomon Vickers has something to do with Anna, after he sees his zodiac filled with bones. They spy on him and even break into his house. Solomon is actually a marine biologist come to the island for six months, and he hires the kids to help catalog his findings - sea bird bones, whale skulls, and plankton. Over the summer he connects with Pierce as they go on expeditions. It's an idyllic few months, before Pierce and his friends will start journeying to the mainland for the next year of school.
Pierce also has kept his Dad's wrecked boat, dry on the front lawn. With enough money saved, he plans to fix it up and take it to sea. Perhaps Solomon can help him with that dream.
This is a light story of a young boy, filled with the history of the island. Pierce can trace his family back 200 years, like most on Perigo Island. Future generations will move on to the mainland, leaving behind ancient skills of fisherman - artisans that are the last of their kind in knowledge of the sea. There is also charming mythology, and solid belief, of the fairies who inhabit the land, mischievous beings that play tricks on you - even leading you astray off a cliff if provoked.
Musician Alan Doyle of the east coast band Great Big Sea quotes on the cover "A poignant and evocative novel", and I couldn't agree more.
Another coming-of-age in Newfoundland book review:
2023 / Tradeback / 264 pages
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