Into The Blizzard by Michael Winter

Into The Blizzard by Michael Winter

"In June a few years ago I set out to visit some of the World War One battlefields of Europe - the slope and valley and river and plain that the Newfoundland Regiment trained on, and fought over and through and under." 
   
So begins Michael Winter's extraordinary narrative that follows two parallel journeys, one laid on top of the other like a sketch on opaque paper over the lines of an old map. The first journey is that of the young men who came from Newfoundland's outports, fields, villages and narrow city streets to join the storied regiment that led many of them to their deaths at Beaumont-Hamel during the Battle of the Somme on July 1, 1916. The second journey is the author's, taken a century later as he walks in the footsteps of the dead men to discover what remains of their passage across land and through memory.
   
   Part unconventional history, part memoir-travelogue, part philosophical inquiry, Michael Winter uniquely captures the extraordinary lives and landscapes, both in Europe and at home, scarred by a war that is just now disappearing from living memory. In subtle and surprising ways, he also tells the hidden story of the very act of remembering - of how the past bleeds into the present and the present corrals and shapes the past. As he wanders from battlefield to barracks to hospital to hotel, and finally to a bereft stretch of land battered by a blizzard back home, Winter gently but persistently unsettles us - startling us with the unexpected encounters and juxtapositions that arise from his physical act of walking through the places where the soldiers once marched, this time armed with artifacts and knowledge those earlier souls could not have, yet undone by the reality of their bodily presence beneath the earth.
   
   In this unusual, poignant and beautiful book, Michael Winter gives us a new way of looking at a powerful piece of history that, he reminds us, continues to haunt our own lives.

MICHAEL WINTER is the author of The Architects Are Here, which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and The Big Why, which was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award and longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. His previous novel, The Death of Donna Whalen, was nominated for the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. His first novel, This All Happened, won the Winterset Award. He is also the recipient of The Writers' Trust Notable Author Award. He divides his time between Toronto and St. John's.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780385677851
ISBN 10	0385677855
Title	Into The Blizzard
Author	Michael Winter
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Random House Canada
Year published	2014-11-04
Number of pages	342
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.