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The Punishing Journey of Arthur Delaney
- Narrated by: Blair Williams
- Length: 6 hrs and 22 mins
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The Punishing Journey of Arthur Delaney
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Summary
For fans of Paulette Jiles and Gil Adamson, a 19th-century tale of a father’s greatest regret and path to redemption
Devastated at his wife’s death and stricken at raising two girls and a boy on his own, Arthur Delaney places his children in a Halifax orphanage and runs off to join the Union Army in the American Civil War. The trauma of battle and three years in a disease-ridden prisoner-of-war prison changes his perspective on life and family.
After the war, Delaney odd-jobs his way up the American east coast and catches a schooner to Halifax. There he discovers the orphanage has relocated to a farm in rural Nova Scotia. His children are not there. They and others had been sold and resold as farm workers and house servants through the Maritime provinces, as well as Quebec and Ontario. Their whereabouts are unknown. Arthur Delaney sets out on a punishing 20-year journey across Canada to find them.
This is a heartbreaking, beautifully told story of a father’s attempt to reconnect with his children.
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Critic reviews
“Bob Kroll’s powerful story of loss and redemption balances heroic feats with sober, gritty realism. From the bustling port of Halifax and backwoods lumber camps of New Brunswick to the crowded quarters of Toronto’s ward and remote mines of British Columbia, Kroll’s indelible characters forge their lives across an unforgiving social world. The resulting portrait of nineteenth-century Canada is sweeping in its geographic scope and meticulous in its fidelity to historical detail.” — J.W. Johnson, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of English, University of Toronto