Böcker av Bernice Morgan

A new edition of Bernice Morgan's classic, best-selling family saga. Forced to flee England, the Andrews family books passage from Weymouth, England to unknown prospects, only to discover a barren, inhospitable land at the end of their crossing: a fresh start in a distant country, New Found Land. There, on the island of Cape Random, the Vincent family introduces them to their way of life. To the pensive, seventeen-year-old Lavinia Andrews, uprooted from everything familiar, it seems a fate worse than the one they left behind. Driven by loneliness she begins a journal. Random Passage satisfies the craving for those details that headstones and history books can never give: the real story of our Newfoundland ancestors, of how time and chance brought them to the forbidding shores of a new found land. It is a saga of families and of individuals; of acquisitive Mary Bundle; of charming Ned Andrews, whose thievery has turned his family into exiles; of mad Ida; of Thomas Hutchings, who might be an aristocrat, a holy man, or a murderer; and of Lavinia - who wrote down the truth and lies about them all. Random Passage has been adapted into a CBC miniseries and is now a national bestseller.

Originally written for a Christmas concert given by internationally-renowned children's choir Shallaway, Bernice Morgan's Seasons Before the War is a delightful, unsentimental remembrance of growing up in St. John's, Newfoundland just before the city, and the world, changed irrevocably with the advent of WWII. This slightly fictionalized telling explores the delights of every day and of each season: how Bernice and her siblings played and passed their time--watching the fire trucks put out fires at the dump, going for messages at the local shops, listening to stories by the kitchen stove--and the bigger moments of starting school, and anticipating Christmas. Charged with the bright wonder of a child's view, the book nevertheless contains the shadow of change; although mentioned only in the book's title, war and its implications for childhood hang quietly over all. Painted illustrations, by acclaimed UK-based illustrator Brita Granström, beautifully capture the sweet nostalgia of Morgan's words and the joys of childhood. Soft and playful, yet detailed and accurate, the illustrations add immeasurably to the book, making it as much an art book as a storybook. With beautiful paper, thoughtful design, and exceptional production values, this is a book to be shared between generations, and to be treasured.