To be perfectly honest, it surprised me. Having read one other book by this author, I was expecting a good read with strong characters, believable action, good dialogue. But I wasn't expecting a great read. And a great read is what it was! I've added it to the short list of best novels I've read this year. Certainly the best Canadian/Commonwealth novel. Straightforward, compelling, character-driven. It just kept me turning those pages . . .

Trudy Morgan-Cole's By the Rivers of Brooklyn is a deftly handled multi-generational story that never loses focus, never becomes an unwieldy saga, but maintains a sense of each individual voice while, at the same time, weaving each character into a fine panoply of great story. Illustrated through these characters, among other things, is what it means to come from somewhere, to love something, and then lose it. Morgan-Cole illustrates the pain of leaving with these characters, the inevitability of coming home.

The tale begins in 1924 and follows a handful of Newfoundland immigrants to New York. Rose, Bert, and Jim Evans head out from Newfoundland for bigger, more lucrative lives, initially leaving behind their sister Anne and youngest brother Harold. What they find in New York, however, is not what they were expecting and the Newfoundland they remember and return to/visit isn't what they thought it was. Expectations, compromises, memories, regrets. Morgan-Cole makes each turn of fate individual and believable, dependant on the particular facets of each character.

We follow the thread of their lives through the war years, the years of desperation and disappointment, of searching and reconciliation. Through a strong sense of voice and characterization, these figures burst off the page. I came to care deeply about whether Rose would find whatever it was she was looking for (a troubled one is Rose). I worried about Anne left alone with her parents in Newfoundland (but then there is Bill!). And I felt the pain of Ethel's (Bert's fiancee) early tragedy and a sense of dread as she makes a desperate choice.

And then the second generation. The children of those whose decisions help to ruin or make them. Ralph, who has Bert's eyes and loses his grip on his family through no fault of his own. Claire who searches calmly and relentlessly for the facts of her birth. Diane, so like her aunt, flashy and fragile. The eccentric, imaginative Valerie who wants to make up her own version of events. And then Claire's daughter Anne, the girl who searches for secrets passages and trunks or diaries that can open the past. Such wonderful characters!

This narrative is fascinating and accessible, tragic and funny. I can't say enough good things about it.

An excerpt:

The pages are black instead of white, the photos black-and-white instead of colour, held in place by little triangles at each corner rather than clingy sheets of cellophane lying on top. Aunt Annie, compelled against her nature, sits down on the chesterfield beside Anne and begins to interpret the lost language of old pictures

"That's me, with your Aunt Frances, Frances Stokes she was then, that was before she married your Uncle Harold. And that's Jim and Poor Bert, up in the field behind our house. That was when we lived out in the country. Look, there's Jim and Ethel on their wedding day, that wasn't here, that was in New York. There they are with Little Jimmy and Diane, look at the lovely head of curls on Diane, she was such a pretty baby. There's your Uncle Harold with --"

"Wait, who's that one?"

"What? I can't see."

"There. Isn't that you, and . . . who's that other girl?"

"I don't know . . . oh, I think that's Rose, me and Rose. Your grandmother." Quickly the page is turned.

Anne sits alone with the album later, turns back to that page, to Rose-your-grandmother. Rose and Annie, sisters, somewhere in St. John's in the 1920s.