Emancipation Day

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ADVANCE PRAISE FOR EMANCIPATION DAY

“A haunting, memorable, believable portrait of a man so desperate to deny his heritage that he imperils his very soul.” --Lawrence Hill

“A brave book to challenge every reader's thinking on race, family, fear, and love. Profound and compelling.” --Annabel Lyon

"Wayne Grady has created characters out of life, out of love, out of recognition and sympathy. They arenot to be missed." --Linda Spalding

"This finely wrought novel navigated the complexities of love, race and loyalties of choice. With a deft hand, Grady convinces us that whatever appearances may suggest, nothing is ever black and white." --Vincent Lam

With his curly black hair and wicked grin, everyone thinks of Frank Sinatra when Navy musician Jackson Lewis takes the stage. It's World War II, and while stationed in Newfoundland, Jack meets Vivian Clift, a local girl who has never stepped off the Rock. They marry against Vivian's family's wishes—hard to say what it is, but there's something about Jack that they just don't like—and as the war ends, the couple travels to Windsor to meet Jack's family. But when Vivian meets Jack's mother and brother, everything she thought she knew about her husband is called into question. They don't live in the dream home that Jack depicted, they all look different from one another—and different from anyone Vivian has ever seen—and after weeks of waiting to meet William Henry, Jack’s father, he never materializes.

Steeped in jazz and big band music, and spanning Windsor-Detroit, St. John’s, Newfoundland, and Toronto, this is an arresting, heartwrenching novel about fathers and sons, love and sacrifice, and a time in our history when the world was on the cusp of momentous change.

WAYNE GRADY is the author of fourteen acclaimed books, and the translator of fifteen novels from the French. He won the Governor General's Award for Translation in 1989, and was nominated for the same award in 1995 and 2005. Grady lives near Kingston with his wife, writer Merilyn Simonds.