That anecdote lodged itself in Michael Crummey's head, and eventually led him to write his fifth work of fiction, a novel called The Innocents. When the clergyman approached them to ask how they came to be there on their own, the boy chased him off at gunpoint. John's archives, he came upon a reference to an 18th century clergyman who discovered two young siblings living on their own in an isolated cove. Years ago, while doing some research in the St. 'Imagine Into the Wild with prepubescents, told in the voice of a William Blake acolyte as verbally inventive as Tolkien.Michael Crummey's latest book came into being almost by happenstance. 'In The Innocents, Mr Crummey, a Newfoundland native, captures in hypnotic prose the force of the driving sea and the ways of a beautiful, barren place where Evered and Ada are cast adrift' - The Economist 'An extraordinary novel, emotionally precise, vivid in its portrayal of nature, and subtle in its exploration of the relationship between life and story' - Wall Street Journal Michael Crummey writes like an avenging angel, never putting a word wrong' - Emma Donoghue, author of Room
'A gripping and credible page-turner about children surviving in the wilderness, but more than that: this Adam and Eve struggle to make sense of a world that's somewhere between Eden and Hell. But as seasons pass and they wade deeper into the mystery of their own natures, even that loyalty will be tested.
Muddling through the severe round of the seasons, through years of meagre catches and storms and ravaging illness, it is their fierce loyalty to each other that motivates and sustains them. Still children with only the barest notion of the outside world, they have nothing but their family's boat and the little knowledge passed on haphazardly by their mother and father to help them survive. Their home is a stretch of rocky shore governed by the feral ocean and a relentless pendulum of abundance and murderous scarcity. In centuries past, a brother and sister are orphaned in an isolated outport cove on Newfoundland's northern coastline. SHORTLISTED FOR THE GILLER PRIZE, THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S PRIZE, AND THE ROGER'S WRITER'S TRUST FICTION AWARD
Richly imagined and compulsively readable, The Innocents is a riveting story of hardship and survival, and an unflinching exploration of the bond between siblings.
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