Emancipation Day
"Grady's novel reads with the velvety tempo of the jazz music of its day. . . . Grady fearlessly explores heated race relations and the masks we all assume." —Chatelaine
With his curly black hair and his wicked grin, everyone swoons and thinks of Frank Sinatra when Navy musician Jackson Lewis takes the stage. It's World War II, and while stationed in St. John's, Newfoundland, Jack meets the well-heeled Vivian Clift, a local girl who has never stepped off the Rock and longs to see the world. They marry against Vivian's family's wishes—there's something about Jack that they just don't like—and as the war draws to a close, the couple travels to Windsor to meet Jack's family.
But when Vivian meets…
WAYNE GRADY has written more than a dozen books for adult and young readers, and is also one of Canada's top literary translators. His novel, Emancipation Day, won the 2013 Amazon.ca First Novel Award and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Wayne Grady’s eight books of non-fiction include Bring Back the Dodo, Chasing the Chinook, and The Bone Museum. He is also a prolific magazine writer, an equally prolific editor of Canadian travel, fiction and nature writing, and the translator of many French authors into English, including Antonine Maillet and Herménégilde Chiasson. Grady lives in Kingston, Ontario, with his wife, novelist and creative nonfiction writer Merilyn Simonds.