Product DescriptionFor three centuries after Europeans rediscovered it, Newfoundland was thought of as little more than "a great English Ship moored near the Banks during the Fishing Season." Labrador, dismissed as that "land God gave to Cain," commanded no more respect. But for the people who made its coastline their home, including the aboriginal peoples who first settled there 9,000 years earlier, Newfoundland and Labrador was of considerably greater significance. In these people lie a fascinating history: Leif Eriksson, James Cook, Black Bart, Benedict Arnold, Brigitte Bardot, Mary Walsh, Joey Smallwood, Amelia Earhart, Shanawdithit, D'Iberville, Audubon and Marconi are but a dozen of the better known.The history of Newfoundland and Labrador is no genteel excursion. Scandal co-existed with extraordinary feats of courage; disaster with daring acts of the imagination. From the ritual burial of a Maritime Archaic child several millennia ago, to the Viking landings, the exploits of Basque whalers, centuries of military and religious strife, confederation with Canada and the collapse of the fisheries -- Kevin Major brings to life the triumphs and setbacks of Newfoundland and Labrador in exciting, vivid prose.From AmazonSt. John's author Kevin Major reminds us that Newfoundland and Labrador--known as "Canada's ocean playground," "this poor bald rock," and the "land God gave to Cain"--are just as famous for their storytelling as for their fish. In his history of the province, As Near to Heaven by Sea, Major recounts tales of lost Beothuk fishers and hunters, Leif Eriksson and his Viking colonists, waters teaming with fish, and hardy European settlers who made the Rock their home. Even the land itself is fertile ground for storytelling. Blessed with staggering beauty, Labrador has some of the oldest dated rock on earth, drawing rockhounds and mining companies from around the world. The Saglek Fjord in northern Labrador, for instance, boasts rocks 3.8 billion years old.Some of the stories verge on the fanciful and fantastic, including those about the earliest purported visitors. Legend has it that visits were paid by such luminaries as Prince Henry Sinclair of Scotland, Welsh Prince Madoc, and St. Brendan the Navigator, a monk said to have stopped by in the sixth century in an ox-hide boat. Some even suggest that Odysseus paid a visit. Major also captures the rowdy days of the 1700s when schools, doctors, and roads were nonexistent and corrupt, often-drunk British admirals dispensed frontier justice. The book would not be complete without a section on Newfoundland's notorious first premier, the diminutive former pig farmer Joey Smallwood. Taken as a whole, the stories retold in As Near to Heaven by Sea fill a hole in Canada's awareness of its past. --Alex RoslinAbout the AuthorKevin Major was born in Newfoundland in 1949, the youngest of seven children. His family roots are on the west coast of the island, in Bonne Bay and Stephenville, where he grew up in the shadow of a U.S. Air Force Base. Before becoming a writer, he taught school in several parts of the province, including the Eastport Peninsula in Bonavista Bay. Kevin Major is the author of a dozen books for both young people and adults, including the much-praised No Man's Land, a novel about the Newfoundland Regiment in the First World War, and As Near to Heaven by Sea: A History of Newfoundland and Labrador. His work has won numerous awards and been translated into several languages. He lives in St. John's with his wife and two teenage sons.

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