The Wake: The Deadly Legacy of a Newfoundland Tsunami

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

“Fascinating,
infuriating, eloquent and cautionary.” —Postmedia

A Globe and Mail, CBC Books
and Maclean’s Book of the Year

In the vein of Erik Larson’s Isaac’s Storm and Dead Wake comes an incredible true story of destruction and
survival in Newfoundland by one of Canada’s best-known writers

On November
18, 1929, a tsunami struck Newfoundland’s Burin Peninsula. Giant waves up to three
storeys high hit the coast at a hundred kilometres per hour, flooding dozens of
communities and washing entire houses out to sea. The most destructive
earthquake-related event in Newfoundland’s history, the disaster killed twenty-eight
people and left hundreds more homeless or destitute. It took days for the
outside world to find out about the death and damage caused by the tsunami,
which forever changed the lives of the inhabitants of the fishing outports
along the Burin Peninsula.

Scotiabank Giller
Prize–winning writer Linden MacIntyre was born near St. Lawrence, Newfoundland,
one of the villages virtually destroyed by the tsunami. By the time of his
birth, the cod-fishing industry lay in ruins and the village had become a
mining town. MacIntyre’s father, lured from Cape Breton to Newfoundland by a
steady salary, worked in St. Lawrence in an underground mine that was later
found to be radioactive. Hundreds of miners would die; hundreds more would
struggle through shortened lives profoundly compromised by lung diseases ranging
from silicosis and bronchitis to cancer. As MacIntyre says, though the tsunami
killed twenty-eight people in 1929, it would claim hundreds if not thousands
more in the decades to follow. And by the time the village returned to its
roots and set up as a cod fishery once again, the stocks in the Grand Banks had
plummeted and St. Lawrence found itself once again on the brink of disaster.

Written in MacIntyre’s
trademark style, The Wake is a major
new work by one of this country’s top writers.

“MacIntyre’s novelistic style and the stories of men, dogs, work, mining, liquor, church, politics, and fate are reminiscent of No Great Mischief, by another Cape Bretoner, Alistair MacLeod.” - Quill & Quire

“MacIntyre is a fine writer.” - Alistair MacLeod, author of No Great Mischief

“MacIntyre is a masterful storyteller.” - Toronto Star

“MacIntyre can build suspense from thin air.” - Maclean's

“MacIntyre isn’t just another face and larynx from television [but] an honest-to-God writer.” - Winnipeg Free Press

“Beautifully written, both descriptively and analytically precise, and a significant contribution.” - Elliott Leyton, anthropologist and author of Dying Hard

“MacIntyre is a superb writer, and his book’s two major set pieces . . . have moments of heart-stopping narrative . . . Yet it’s the subtle, nuanced intertwining of family and larger story that gives The Wake its power.” - Maclean's

"MacIntyre does more than relate this powerful story. An award-winning novelist, he raises the book to the level of literature." - The Globe and Mail

“The Wake is a story of ecological calamity, economic depravity, political indifference and the banality of evil. For generations, the hardy citizens of Newfoundland’s southern shore, where Linden MacIntyre was born, have met unfathomable loss and hardship with enduring bravery. MacIntyre’s deep and abiding compassion for these people shines through in this masterful work.” - Mark Sakamoto, author of Forgiveness: A Gift from My Grandparents, winner of CBC Canada Reads

“For generations, the hardy citizens of Newfoundland’s southern shore, where Linden MacIntyre was born, have met unfathomable loss and hardship with enduring bravery. MacIntyre’s deep and abiding compassion for these people shines through in this masterful work.” - Mark Sakamoto, author of Forgiveness: A Gift from My Grandparents, winner of CBC Canada Reads

“Fast-paced and near-unstoppable, The Wake is the kind of book you can’t put down. Linden MacIntyre’s relentless voice just won’t let you stop reading, deftly showing how man and nature stacked the dice against the people of small-town Newfoundland, who suffered their own form of near-Biblical plagues. The Wake will leave you shaken and angry at the ease at which real, live people can become the pawns of careless powers.”   - Russell Wangersky, author of Whirl Away, finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and Burning Down the House

“Fast-paced and near-unstoppable, The Wake is the kind of book you can’t put down. Linden MacIntyre’s relentless voice just won’t let you stop reading, deftly showing how man and nature stacked the dice against the people of small-town Newfoundland.” - Russell Wangersky, author of Whirl Away, finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and Burning Down the House

“Great, soulful storytelling. All of Linden MacIntyre’s singular capacities—as novelist, reporter, social critic, and intimate chronicler of Atlantic Canada—are in full force-of-nature in The Wake.” - Charles Foran, author of Mordecai: The Life and Times and Planet Lolita

"MacIntyre is a great storyteller. . . . A major work by one of Canada's great writers."