Finding Edward
by Sheila Murray
ISBN: 9781770866263
Format: Trade Paperback w/ flaps
Size: 5.5" x 8.5"
Subjects:
FIC019000 FICTION / Literary
FIC051000 FICTION / Cultural Heritage
FIC014000 FICTION / Historical / General
Price: $24.95
Publication Date: June 15, 2022
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Synopsis:
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Cyril Rowntree migrates to Toronto from Jamaica in 2012. Managing a precarious balance of work and university he begins to navigate his way through the implications of being racialized in his challenging new land.
A chance encounter with a panhandler named Patricia leads Cyril to a suitcase full of photographs and letters dating back to the early 1920s. Cyril is drawn into the letters and their story of a white mother’s struggle with the need to give up her mixed race baby, Edward. Abandoned by his own white father as a small child, Cyril’s keen intuition triggers a strong connection and he begins to look for the rest of Edward’s story.
As he searches, Cyril unearths fragments of Edward’s itinerant life as he crisscrossed the country. Along the way, he discovers hidden pieces of Canada’s Black history and gains the confidence to take on his new world.
Winner, 2023 Hamilton Literary Awards - Fiction
Shortlisted, 2023 Toronto Book Awards
Shortlisted, 2022 Governor General’s Literary Award - Fiction
Longlisted, 2023 Canada Reads
Selected, 2023 One Book One Aurora
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Reviews
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“In lucid, scintillating prose, suffused with mystery and everyday magic, Sheila Murray delivers one of the most penetrating dramas of Black experience in all of Canadian literature. This tale of a lonely Jamaican student enrolled at Ryerson University follows his obsession with the life of a struggling Black boy in Depression-era Toronto. A parallel portrait of two Black bi-racial men, Finding Edward expands to enfold a sweeping history of Blacks in Canada. This beautiful, necessary novel will become a touchstone.”
— Donna Bailey Nurse, author of What’s a Black Critic to Do?
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“Murray’s rich narrative offers mystery, but it also spans decades of Canadian history, differentiating Finding Edward from the typical immigrant story. The prospect of better understanding Edward’s life in Canada offers Cyril an escape from his own excruciating isolation. Murray triumphs in capturing the undeniable and unmistakable ache of severe loneliness.”
— Quill & Quire
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“A remarkable novel. In this, her first, Sheila Murray has created a haunting allegory out of the Caribbean’s relationship with Canada. Cyril leaves Jamaica for Toronto, where he discovers that the real education he will need for ‘a better life’ involves an exploration of the life of a man born seven decades before him. Edward’s lonely journey of social marginalization takes him from Africville to the lumber camps of British Columbia across much of the twentieth century; his life of adversity and poverty in a country yet to recognize its racist policies and practices is a parallel to the life Cyril is trying to forge anew. This novel is a great achievement; it reminds us that the surmountable obstacles facing us in any age are frequently unfounded and misinformed prejudices.”
— Rachel Manley, author of the Governor General’s Literary Award-winning Drumblair
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“Powerful”
— Open Book
“… Finding Edward offers readers a clear-sighted and deeply felt novel, which reminds us there are more ways of knowing what happened in the past than just knowing what happened. This is a powerful debut that considers the history and the present of Black people through a truly vibrant set of characters.”
— Véronique Darwin, Literary Review of Canada
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“Sheila Murray’s debut novel Finding Edward is a significant literary work that gives a voice to the voiceless and infuses the present with a previously unrecorded past, bridging much of the black experience in twentieth century Canada, from Africville to the lumber camps of British Columbia.”
— Mason Haigh, Rebel Women Lit
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“A tremendous debut novel that captivates you from the first sentence to the last. A beautiful tale told with deep humanity, so raw and real, it could only be written from the soul. Sheila Murray’s prose is exquisite, and her gift for storytelling is a delight and a treasure.”
—Indra Ramayan, The Globe 100: The Best Books of 2022
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“Finding Edward is … both a serious look at societal stagnation and change as well as a tender tale of what it means to be biracial in Canada in two different eras and provinces, which makes this redemptive, intimate, and special novel well worth reading.”
— Victoria Gibson-Billings, The Dalhousie Review
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