The Wreckage

R. Gordon Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta. He is co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities:
British Views of Canada, 1880–1914, author of The Salvation Army and
the Public, and editor of “Improved by Cult

A tragedy in three acts, this remarkable novel vivifies the emotional
and spiritual wreckage left in the wake of unfulfilled love, religious
and racial bigotry, and an unforgiving war. In the first act, set in the
early 1940s, Aloysious (Wish) Furey, visiting the small Newfoundland
outport of Little Fogo Island to show movies, falls hopelessly in love
with Mercedes (Sadie) Parsons—hopeless because he is Catholic and she
Protestant. Family prejudice, born of religious bigotry, forces Wish to
flee their anger and, in act two, he joins the British army. Sent to
Singapore, he eventually becomes a Japanese prisoner of war in Nagasaki,
where he is singled out for special torture by a Japanese soldier who
formerly lived in British Columbia and is seeking revenge for the racial
embarrassments he endured in Canada. Wish sustains his spirit and body
with the knowledge that Sadie, who has herself fled Little Fogo Island,
is waiting for him in St. John’s. Unfortunately, she receives a false
report of Wish’s death, marries an American soldier, and goes to lives
in the United States, ignorant of her lover’s survival. In the third
act, after 50 years of wandering, broken and now an alcoholic, Wish
returns to St. John’s; Sadie, her husband dead, does so as well, and
the final moments of the tragedy are played out.

That brief synopsis may make the novel seem like a melodrama. Believe
me, it is not. Crummey not only writes spellbinding prose but also
invests his story with a realism—of both character and
situation—that captures moments of love, cruelty, and self-torment
with compassion and clarity. The opening scenes, set in the small
Newfoundland outport, are especially vivid in their detail, in the
cadences of the conversations, and in the poignancy of the
love-and-death encounters. The middle section, set in the Japanese POW
camp, is similarly evocative, mainly of privation and cruelty, but also
of resourcefulness. Only in the final section does Crummey falter; the
style here seems less assured and the ending is somewhat stilted. That
aside, the novel is excellent: another triumph from a novelist who is
fast becoming one of Canada’s best.