Latitudes of Melt

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

April 1912. A baby girl is found floating in a basket on an ice pan off
the coast of Newfoundland. She is taken to the Drook, a small southeast
community, by the fishermen who found her, adopted, and named Aurora.
Her appearance, her love of poetry, and her almost mystical relationship
with the land and the sea set her apart in a community where life is
hard, literacy is not highly regarded, and the land and the sea are seen
only as sources of food.

Latitudes of Melt is the story of Aurora’s youth, her love for Tom (a
lighthouse-keeper’s son with whom she shares her love of reading and
nature), and her relationships with her children and grandchildren. It
is also the story of the land and sea, the lives they rule, and the
impact each makes on the other in the passage of time. It is not until
her granddaughter goes to live in Ireland that Aurora learns the sad
tale of how she came to be floating on the ice off Newfoundland, in the
“latitudes of melt.” This is an enjoyable, well-told story.