Where Old Ghosts Meet

My mother is a Corner Brook girl. Growing up in Montreal, our home was filled with stories and songs from The Rock and I often wondered why Newfoundlanders were so passionate—if not outright obsessed—with their past. After living in Atlantic Canada for a decade I now understand; it is because they have one.

History again comes alive in Kate Evans’ debut novel Where Old Ghosts Meet, a touching and tender tale of one woman’s efforts to uncover her family’s history.

Nora Malloy arrives in the outport community of Shoal Cove in the early 1970s, where she meets the elderly Peg Berry. In an account that borders on epic, Berry discloses the details of Malloy’s Grandfather’s abandonment of wife and children in Ireland in the early 1900s and his eventual resettlement in pre-Confederation Newfoundland.

En route, readers are treated to insights into identity; that of Malloy’s Grandfather Matthew, of Malloy herself and of two heartlands that, though linked by a common Celtic culture, are quickly headed in opposite directions; one struggles for nationhood, while the other will soon lose its independence.

The Irish-born Evans has also done well to draw upon her own heritage, as the narrative rollicks and rolls with a language, lyricism and rhythm that are rooted in both regions; mood and tone are established early, setting is solid and sure and the plot is fluid and never forced. Masterfully, the author has given the characters more than enough strength and space to breathe on their own.

While the comparisons to fellow Newfoundland scribes Donna Morrissey and Bernice Morgan are sure to come, Evans has still succeeded in not only giving a voice to the past of her two homelands and its peoples, but to do so in one that is distinctly her own. —Stephen Patrick Clare