The Silent Time.

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

In 1907 the Newfoundland government ordered a new consignment of two-cent and five-cent stamps. They were shipped on board the Silvia in April 1908 in three boxes. Unfortunately, the ship was wrecked and the stamps washed ashore, to become a puzzling footnote in the island’s philatelic history. Paul Rowe takes that event, and, with a necessary adjustment of facts, cleverly weaves around it a story of misguided zeal, sudden tragedy, wartime guilt, and a slow but courageous act of kindness.

The lives of Leona Merrigan, her deaf daughter, Dulcie, and the successful but guilt-ridden politician, William Cantwell, are intimately portrayed, as are the forces that control those lives: the constricting lifestyle of a Newfoundland outport, the political intrigues and confusion of Newfoundland politics just after World War I, the stamp-collecting frenzy after the famous de Pinedo flight, and, most interesting of all, life at the Halifax School for the Deaf.

Rowe draws these threads together in compelling fashion, skilfully blending historical fact and suspenseful narrative, to create a memorable first novel. He is a gifted storyteller, a fine stylist, and a sensitive portrayer of human emotion. Altogether well worth reading.