The Custodian of Paradise

Wayne Johnston

ene 2010 · Vintage Canada

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The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, Wayne Johnston’s breakthrough novel based on the life of Newfoundland’s first premier, Joe Smallwood, was published internationally and earned him nominations for the highest fiction prizes in Canada. One of the most highly praised elements of the novel is the character Sheilagh Fielding, with whom Smallwood shares a lifelong love-hate relationship.

The Custodian of Paradise is a riveting narrative with Fielding at its heart. Fielding—advancing on middle age, hobbled by disfigurement and personal demons—is headed for Loreburn, a deserted island off the south coast of Newfoundland. She has borne a lifetime of estrangement and heartbreak by setting herself apart from the rest of St. John’s society. By cultivating her isolation, she’s been able to write, both in her journals and for the Telegram. By skirting Prohibition laws, she’s also been able to dull the pain of her early years. Alone she remains—except for the mysterious stranger she calls her Provider.

As Fielding revisits her articles, letters and journals, we are swept up in her tumultuous life’s journey and the mystery of this Provider’s identity. From the downtrodden streets of New York’s immigrant neighbourhoods to the sanatorium where she fights TB, from the remote workers’ shacks of the Bonavista rail line to the underbelly of wartime St. John’s, the Provider seems to have devoted himself to charting Fielding’s every move and to sending her maddeningly cryptic letters about his role in her life. Yet he has also protected her at times. While she fears that he may have followed her to Loreburn, she fears even more that he may not be able to find her there.

With The Custodian of Paradise, Wayne Johnston continues his masterful exploration of life in pre-Confederation Newfoundland, and of the powerful forces that give rise to great character—individualism, circumstance, and secrecy; memory, loss, and regret.

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WAYNE JOHNSTON was born and raised in Goulds, Newfoundland. His bestselling novels including The Divine Ryans, A World Elsewhere, The Custodian of Paradise, The Navigator of New York, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, and First Snow, Last Light. His first book, The Story of Bobby O'Malley won the WH Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Baltimore's Mansion, a memoir about his father and grandfather, won the inaugural Charles Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction. The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, published in 1998, was nominated for sixteen national and international awards including the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, and was a Canada Reads finalist defended by Justin Trudeau. He lives in Toronto.