David Macfarlane's Summer Gone introduces a writer of incandescent literary skill and beautifully evokes the sometimes painful relationship between father and son.
When Bay Newby is twelve he is sent north for the first time, and he falls in love with the life of ritual, beauty, and stark privilege of summer camp. Then the death of his baby sister calls him home, and it will be twenty-three years before his next "perfect summer." The summer he spends with his young son will contain loss also, but also discovery and redemption.""Summer Gone is a novel of layered experience, of life, death...

Emulating the circuitous tales told by his mother's relatives, the Goodyears of Newfoundland, David Macfarlane has crafted a masterpiece of history and memory that will remain indelibly in the minds of its readers. Macfarlane weaves the major events of Newfoundland's twentieth century-the ravages of tuberculosis; the great seal-hunt disaster; the bitter debate over whether to become part of Canada; and above all, the First World War-into a saga of the ill-starred yet heroic fortunes of his family, who were rarely in control of events but often at the center of them. With deep affection, he...