One Single Hour

Ronald Charles Epstein is a Toronto-based freelance writer and published poet.

Hamilton-born Harvey Sawler is a veteran Atlantic Canada journalist who
applies his knowledge of the region in this complex novel. It is the
story of a young Englishwoman’s quest to find the truth about her
grandfather, a Royal Navy captain whose ship ran aground off the coast
of Labrador, with fatal consequences.

The novel can be studied as a literary geometric form—the “lust
triangle.” “Lust,” not “love,” since the triangle involves one
man who sleeps with two women. In this case, a young Labrador guy named
Ivey Beals desires both local Fenella Ryland and her double, Lee
Halliwell, granddaughter of Jack, the aforementioned captain. When he
meets Lee, in the English town of Stratford, he shows her Fenella’s
photo, inspiring her to probe the connections between the two women and
the ill-fated officer.

The story’s sexuality is questionable and humorous. Could a disgraced
commander impregnate two Grenfell nurses from the same station? Readers
may be amused by a scene in which nurse Adella Ryland “re-creates”
her torrid tryst with Jack Halliwell on a swing. This gives new meaning
to the contemporary cliché “Go to your happy place.”

One Single Hour is not a science-fiction story, but some of its action
is set in the future. In 2004, Lee and Ivey adopt young Heather after
her mother, Adella, dies of cervical cancer. Readers are informed that
“Heather’s first one-woman show at the age of twenty-eight was in a
small gallery near Covent Garden.” You do the math.

Sawler can stun the wary. When Fenella enlists her drunken friend
Hedley Buckle to babysit Heather—in his house—the perceptive sense
trouble. This knowledge does not lessen the impact of Lee’s discovery
of Buckle’s molestation.

One Single Hour is for those who seek The Great Canadian Epic, but are
willing to settle for flawed, diverting sagas.