Into The Blizzard: Walking the Fields of the Newfoundland Dead

(Hardback)

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Description

Award-winning novelist Michael Winter turns his hand to nonfiction in this gripping and uniquely personal book about the young men of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment who were all but annihilated 100 years ago, at the Battle of the Somme during the First World War--and the surprising political and social reverberations of that battle, which are still felt in Canada and in Europe today. This is history as only Michael Winter could write it--urgently alive, affecting and relevant.

Reviews

A Globe and Mail Best Book of 2014
Longlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize

"[With Into the Blizzard], I believe that Winter has offered the world a piece of his heart. . . . The writing far surpasses that of the standard CanLit non-fiction fare, even that which lands on the RBC Taylor Prize. . . . Into the Blizzard is a love letter to a province's sacrifice by a great Canadian writer."
The Winnipeg Review

[Into the Blizzard has] genuine intimacy and immediacy . . . a meditation not just about war and sacrifice but about memory and mythology and a past becoming fragmented by time.
Saskatoon StarPhoenix

[An] often-riveting treatise on war. . . . A truly compelling voice and point of view. . . . Winters arguments may be familiar, but theyre made fresh and compelling by a troubling notion he introduces: that time might be diminishing our understanding of the war, not increasing it, leaving it simplistically reified, not furnished with nuance. The Globe and Mail

Toronto-based, Newfoundland-raised author Michael Winter takes us along the winding path the men of Newfoundland Regiment followed during the First World War. . . . Part history, part travelogue and part author's musings on how our modern minds contemplate the past. . . . [A] poignant account. Winnipeg Free Press

Michael Winter . . . has written a love letter to the soldiers who fought for the Royal Newfoundland Regiment during the First World War. . . . His lyrical writing and attention to detail are at their peak . . . [with] powerful imagery and detailed portraits of fragile human beings. As much as Winter may decry the war itself, he is ferociously proud of those who faced the blizzard of machine-gun fire with their chins tucked into an advanced shoulder. Winter asks us never to lose sight of their lives, no matter how short or apparently inconsequential.
Quill & Quire, featured review

[A] brilliant first foray into non-fiction.
Geoffrey Taylor, Toronto Star

Author Bio

MICHAEL WINTER is the author of a number of novels, including The Architects Are Here, which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and The Big Why, which was longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The Death of Donna Whalen, was nominated for the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. He is also the recipient of the Writers' Trust Notable Author Award.