The Burin Girl came about as an offshoot of a few years research into Newfoundland history. I was enthralled by the lives of the men, women and children who populated the outports and started thinking about how those lives were impacted by current events at the turn of the twentieth century and the decades that followed.
One critic sees the novel as a work of feminism, and I suppose it is, but it’s meant to be more than that. I hope Readers will also see the love and the humour and the unquenchable spirit of Johanna and her offspring.
Meet Selena O’Shea, second daughter of Johanna and Henry. She never got to know her Dad. She was a ‘fidgity’ little girl and it got her in trouble in the ‘orfinidge’.
Canadian Stories 