Love’s Triumph

Spanning two continents and six decades, Michael Crummey’s second novel, The Wreckage, is a beautifully spun romance, an epic story that affirms love’s triumph over time and circumstance. Beyond the depth of each lover’s feeling for the beloved, the novel also reveals the profound consequences of separation.

Set in the outport villages of Newfoundland and the Japanese prisoner of war camps of World War Two, The Wreckage is divided into three time periods, 1940, 1945 and 1994, and centres on the relationship of two teenaged sweethearts, Mercedes Parsons (Sadie) and Aloysious Furey (Wish). The story, told in alternating chapters from each character’s perspective, begins with the meeting of eyes across a crowded theatre hall and a jolt of instant chemistry. From the start, forces beyond their control intrude, including Mercedes’s anti-Catholic mother and insular Protestant community. But nothing deters their clandestine sexual explorations. After...