Wayne Johnston Books In Order

Novels

  1. The Story of Bobby O’Malley (1985)
  2. The Time of Their Lives (1987)
  3. The Divine Ryans (1990)
  4. Human Amuseme*nts (1994)
  5. The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (1999)
  6. The Navigator of New York (2002)
  7. The Custodian of Paradise (2006)
  8. A World Elsewhere (2011)
  9. The Son of a Certain Woman (2013)
  10. First Snow, Last Light (2017)
  11. The Mystery of Right and Wrong (2021)

Non fiction

  1. Baltimore’s Mansion (1999)

Novels Book Covers

Non fiction Book Covers

Wayne Johnston Books Overview

The Divine Ryans

A poignant tale by the author of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. Draper Doyle Ryan, a nine year old Habs fan, struggles with the mysterious death of his father, his budding adolescence, and the strange demands of his eccentric family.

Human Amuseme*nts

Offering further evidence of his astounding range as a novelist, the bestselling author of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams and The Navigator of New York crafts a hilarious and moving paean to the dawn of the television age. Henry Prendergast grew up on television not merely watching it, but starring in the wildly popular children’s show Rumpus Room. Cast in the roles of Bee Good and Bee Bad by his mother Audrey, the show s creator, Henry came of age along with the new medium one that would soon propel his family out Toronto s middle class life and into the tabloids. Henry s father Peter, a would be novelist, refuses to have any part in his wife s burgeoning television empire, but commits himself instead to the task of being a walking, talking mostly scathing reminder of the family s humble beginnings. Then, on the heels of Rumpus Room, Audrey dreams up The Philo Farnsworth Show, loosely based on the life story of the young teen credited with inventing the tube and starring Henry in the lead role. Rapidly amassing a cult like following of Philosophers, the show challenges the Prendergasts anew. Forced into increasing isolation by a fervent media, they must work harder than ever to not let success get the best of them.

The Colony of Unrequited Dreams

The Colony of Unrequited Dreams‘ is Newfoundland that vast, haunting near continent upon which the two lovers and adversaries of this miraculously inventive novel pursue their ambitions. Joey Smallwood, sprung from almost Dickensian privation, is a scholarship boy at a private school, where his ready wit bests the formidably tart tongued Sheilagh Fielding. Their dual fates become forever linked by an anonymous letter to a local paper critical of the school a letter whose mysterious authorship will weigh heavily on their lives. Driven by socialist dreams and political desire, Smallwood will walk a railroad line the breadth of Newfoundland in a journey of astonishing power and beauty, to unionize the workers and make his name. Fielding, now a popular newspaper columnist, provides in her journalism, her diaries, and her bleakly hilarious ‘Condensed History of Newfoundland’ a satirical and eloquent counternarrative to Smallwood’s story. As the decades pass and Smallwood’s rise converges with Newfoundland’s emerging autonomy, these two vexed characters must confront their own frailties and secrets and their mutual if doomed love. The Colony of Unrequited Dreams combines erudition, unflagging narrative brio, and emotional depth in a manner reminiscent of the best of Robertson Davies and John Irving. Set in a landscape already made familiar to American readers by Annie Proulx and Howard Norman, it establishes Wayne Johnston as a novelist who is as profound as he is funny, with an unerringly ironic sense of the intersection where private lives and history collide.

The Navigator of New York

From the bestselling author of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams brilliant and accomplished Annie Proulx, an epic novel of one man’s quest for the secret of his origins that ranges from the bustling streets of nineteenth century New York to the remotest regions of the Arctic.

As a young child in St. John s, Devlin Stead and his mother, Amelia, are suddenly abandoned by his father, Dr. Francis Stead, who flees north to practise medicine among the Eskimos. Distraught by his absence, Amelia throws herself into the icy ocean from Signal Hill. Rather than return home, his father joins the American Lieutenant Peary on one of his attempts to reach the North Pole, but wanders off from camp one night and is never seen again. Now orphaned, Devlin grows up an outcast and a loner, attended to by his devoted aunt Daphne and his taciturn physician uncle.

And then one day his uncle summons Devlin to his office and hands him an extraordinary letter from the explorer, Dr. Frederick Cook the first of several that will change everything Devlin thought he knew about himself. He will sail to New York to become Dr. Cook s prot g , to be introduced into society, and eventually to accompany him on his race to reach the Pole before his arch rival Peary. It is in Manhattan that Devlin falls in love with a young woman with an astonishing family connection to Amelia.

In The Navigator of New York Wayne Johnston s descriptions of place whether of the frozen Arctic wastes or the city of New York, bursting with the energy of a metropolis about to become the capital city of the globe evoke an extraordinary physicality and conviction. A remarkable achievement that seamlessly weaves fact and fabrication, it continues the masterful reinvention of the historical novel Wayne Johnston began with his lavishly praised The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.

From the Hardcover edition.

The Custodian of Paradise

A Book of the Month Club ‘Best Novel of 2007.’In the waning days of World War II, Sheilagh Fielding makes her way to a deserted island off the coast of Newfoundland. But she soon comes to suspect another presence: that of a man known only as her Provider, who has shadowed her for twenty years. Against the backdrop of Newfoundland’s history and landscape, Fielding is a compelling figure. Taller than most men and striking in spite of her crippled leg, she is both eloquent and subversively funny. Her newspaper columns exposing the foibles and hypocrisies of her native city, St. John’s, have made many powerful enemies for her, chief among them the man who fathered her children twins when she was fourteen. Only her Provider, however, knows all of Fielding’s secrets. Reading group guide included.

Baltimore’s Mansion

The acclaimed author of The Colony of Unrequited Dreams introduces us to the Johnstons of Newfoundland in an intimate, captivating memoir of three generations of fathers and sons. The New York Times called Wayne Johnston’s The Colony of Unrequited Dreams ‘an eventful, character rich book…
a brilliant and bravura literary performance.’ His marvelous new memoir, Baltimore’s Mansion, is equally impressive, filled with heart stopping descriptions, a cast of stubborn, acerbic, yet entirely irresistible family members, and an evocation of time and place reminiscent of his best fiction. Charlie Johnston is the famed blacksmith of Ferryland, a Catholic colony founded by Lord Baltimore in the 1620s on the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland. For his prowess at the forge, he is considered as necessary as a parish priest at local weddings. But he must spend the first cold hours of every workday fishing at sea with his sons, one of whom, the author’s father, Arthur, vows that as an adult he will never look to the sea for his livelihood. In the heady months leading to the referendum that results in Newfoundland being ‘inducted’ into Canada, Art leaves the island for college and an eventual career with Canadian Fisheries, studying and regulating a livelihood he and his father once pursued. He parts on mysterious terms with Charlie, who dies while he’s away, and Art is plunged into a lifelong battle with the personal demons that haunted the end of their relationship. Years later, Wayne prepares to leave at the same age Art was when he said good bye to Charlie, and old patterns threaten to repeat themselves. At times a harrowing tale of trails in the darkness, of grand desolation and dangerous coasts, Baltimore’s Mansion speaks to us all about the hardships, blessings, and power of family relationships, of leaving home and returning.

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