Rockbound [Paperback]

Frank Parker Day (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1989

To the harsh domain of Rockbound -- governed by the sternly righteous and rapacious Uriah Jung --comes the youthful David Jung to claim his small share of the island. Filled with dreamy optimism and a love for the unspoken promises of the night sky, David tries to find his way in a narrow, unforgiving, and controlled world. His conflicts are both internal and external, locking him in an unceasing struggle for survival; sometimes the sea is his enemy, sometimes his own rude behavior, sometimes his best friend Gershom Born, sometimes his secret love for the island teacher Mary Dauphiny; but always, inevitably, his Jung relatives and their manifold ambitions for money and power.

The balance of life on Rockbound is precarious and thus fiercely guarded by all who inhabit its lonely domain, but just as a sudden change in the direction of the wind can lead to certain peril at sea, so too can the sudden change in the direction of a man's heart lead to a danger altogether unknown.

Enormously evocative of the power, terror, and dramatic beauty of the Atlantic sea, and unrelenting in its portrait of back-breaking labour, cunning bitterness, and family strife, Rockbound is a story of many passions-love, pride, greed, and yearning -- all formed and buffeted on a small island by an unyielding wind and the rocky landscape of the human spirit.

Canada Reads 2005 Winner!

In a David and Goliath style battle to the finish, Rockbound by Frank Parker Day triumphed over Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood and was declared the 2005 Canada Reads winner. In a series of debates that aired on the CBC in February, panelist Donna Morrissey, author of Kit?s Law and Downhill Chance, passionately championed this 1928 novel about life and nature on the small maritime island of Rockbound. The victory has brought this Atlantic Province favourite back into the limelight and is receiving nationwide attention, appearing on several bestseller lists across the country.

After its initial publication, Rockbound remained in out of print status until 1973, when the University of Toronto Press acquired the rights to publish as part of their ?Literature of Canada Prose and Poetry in Reprint? series. It was reprinted with an introduction by Allan Bevan of Dalhousie University?s English Department.

In 1989, Gerald Hallowell, an editor with the University of Toronto Press, rescued Rockbound from the backlist of the UTP catalogue. The book was reprinted with an afterword by Gwendolyn Davies, Dean of Graduate Studies and Associate Vice-President (Research) at the University of New Brunswick.

UTP had been selling around 200 copies of the book per year, until Donna Morrissey selected it for the Canada Reads debates. Since then, UTP has sold over 35,000 copies and it has been reprinted three times!

The University of Toronto Press would like to thank Donna Morrissey for her superb defense of the book and all of the people at the CBC for their support and encouragement.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'The book is attractively presented, and the clear arrangement of chapters, along with the comprehensive index, makes it a valuable reference work heartily to be welcomed.' -- Scott Patterson "Music Magazine"

From the Back Cover

When 18-year-old David Jung arrives on the windswept island of Rockbound to claim his modest inheritance, he has nothing but the rags on his back and a fisherman’s determination to survive. Battling the unpredictable sea and steering his way between Rockbound’s two warring clans, the friendless orphan gradually builds a life for himself. He marries and has a son, finds a soulmate in lighthouse keeper Gershom Born, and falls deeply (and secretly) in love with Mary, the island schoolteacher. But he does not reckon on the wicked cunning of his great-uncle, Uriah, self-proclaimed king of Rockbound and David’s one true enemy. First published in 1928, Frank Parker Day’s deeply allusive novel evokes the terrifying power and breathtaking beauty of Canada’s Atlantic coastline, where a shift in the wind — like a sudden change in a man’s heart — can lead to certain peril. Shakespearean actor Richard Donat evokes the quiet majesty of this long-forgotten classic, imparting a rich resonance to the Nova Scotia dialect of Day’s Rockbounders. --This text refers to the Audio CD edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 326 pages
• Publisher: University of Toronto Press, Scholarly Publishing Division (May 1, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802067239
• ISBN-13: 978-0802067234
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #495,638 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Warning all Bluenosers, March 1, 2005

By 

Bruce F Jones (Longford Mills Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Rockbound (Paperback)

This is a book chaulk full of your history the way you've not likely heard it told. Truly a must read for any maritimer.
Put a log on the fire, find a comfy chair, a glass of port and enjoy a trip to your roots.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Between A Rock And A Hard Place, May 27, 2005

By 

John G. Hilliard (Toronto Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rockbound (Paperback)

I wanted to read this book just because of the positive word of mouth the book gets and I believed it would be interesting. What I was not prepared for was the difficult slang that the author used through most of the book. Ok so it makes the book authentic, but I found my self getting frustrated at times and I do not read a book to get frustrated. The book is about a fishing family in what must be one of the worst weather locations on the planet. Cold, wet, and dark, no wonder the folks there were in such a perpetual bad mood.

I must say that the book has a way to suck you into the story. There is so much nasty under current that I kept reading just to find out the next tough stretch. I also loved all the detail of the fishing industry in the early 1900's. It is fitting that such a difficult profession was the occupation of this group of islanders. Overall I did enjoy the book. It had a ton of historic detail and great characters. I just did not like the difficult slang.

5.0 out of 5 stars One of my favourite Canadian novels ever, June 2, 2011

By 

Craig Rowland (Mississauga) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rockbound (Paperback)

Rockbound by Frank Parker Day is a "rediscovered" novel from 1928. Reprinted only for the second time in 1973, yet not achieving widespread acclaim until 2005, this hidden gem took thus almost eight decades to capture the attention of Canada from coast to coast. When my library system singled out this novel as a "Rave and Fave" (a term we use for focussing attention on specific novels or works of nonfiction for a brief period, then introducing new titles) I was interested. Rockbound bills itself as "the classic novel of Nova Scotia's South Shore". Since my beloved is from Nova Scotia I always read something from down east before or after a trip I make with him to see the in-laws. I do this to get me in the maritime mood. Rockbound was my choice prior to our upcoming trip.

Not since "...And Ladies of the Club" have I read a novel that has given me such pleasure. I will be raving about Rockbound for months to come. Day captures the hard fishing life on a small Nova Scotia island with an accuracy that could only have been acquired from being there. Day was a native Nova Scotian and paid exquisite attention to the dialect of the fishermen of the South Shore. He reproduces the speech of the islanders and, unlike many phonetic dialectical transcriptions which I find difficult to read in print (but not a problem to read aloud), the Germanic-based dialect flows along without pulling me back to parse what it is that people are saying. For example, when David Jung, the protagonist, sails to Rockbound island, he asks his great-uncle Uriah to work with him on the fishing boats:

"An' what might ye be wantin'?" said the old man, the king of Rockbound.
"I wants fur to be yur sharesman," answered David.
"Us works here on Rockbound."
"I knows how to work."
"Knows how to work an' brung up on de Outposts! jeered Uriah. "Us has half a day's work done 'fore de Outposters rub de sleep out o' dere eyes, ain't it!"
"I knows how to work," repeated the boy stubbornly.
"Where's yur gear an' clothes at?"
"I'se got all my gear an' clothes on me," said David, grinning down at his buttonless shirt, ragged trousers, and bare, horny feet, "but I owns yon dory: I salvaged her from de sea an' beat de man what tried to steal her from me."

The language in the narrative could just as easily have been written in 2011. Aside from the occasional "never the less" (when compound words were still written comprised of individual words), the novel has a contemporary flow and I could not believe as I read its 328 pages that it was written in 1928. Day writes a story that feels like one of those tales you cuddle up with your cousins to hear an old uncle tell. I felt so captivated by the story of David's life and struggles on Rockbound island that it took me back to the days of my childhood when I had stories read to me.

Life on an isolated small island gave its leader, or "king" Uriah, as well as its inhabitants, certain feelings of autonomy and liberty. Day writes about the general feelings of sexual laxity on the island, and how no one was scandalized by premarital sex or even "love children" (i.e., children born out of wedlock). Women on the island were raised to believe that they served their men, both in the kitchen and in the bedroom.

I was touched by the lonely, yearning feelings shared by the women of the island. The women whose husbands are out at sea every day, in rough water and dismal weather, risking their lives as a matter of course:

"Rockbound women study how to be of use to their husbands. They work, for there is no one to hire to do the work that somehow is naturally expected of them and which seems right and proper to themselves. They rear their children, then their houses, milk cows, feed chickens, hoe the gardens, help with the hay, and when necessary give a hand in the fish house. It is no uncommon sight to see a couple of babies sleeping in an old sail on top of the fish puncheons as the mothers split fish. But in addition to this work they are always watching from the windows. As they go from duty to duty, they peer from upstairs windows for the boats. Trust them, they know every boat, every patch upon the brown sails, the peculiar chug of every engine, the curve of each stem, the sheer, the strip of colour beneath the gunwale. Each watches for the return of her man."

The funniest parts of Rockbound were about the ghosts or "haunts" that bedevil lonely (and often drunk) lighthouse keepers. Day had me laughing out loud as two fishermen misunderstand the meaning behind a certain ghostly verb:

"So de preacher he yells, 'No, let's exercise him by prayer an' de power o' de Lord.'
"Den Israel Slaughenwhite says, 'Us don't want to exercise no ghost, us wants to git rid o' him; he's gettin' exercise enough trailing round de Sanford roads an' fields.'
"Den de preacher, he begin to explain what dis here exercisin' really meant, but jus' at dat very moment dat audacious ghos' goes whang, whang, whang, wid a big timber agin de back o' de schoolhouse. He damn nigh bust in de rear end, dat time. Dat settled dat, de preacher was finished, an' Israel got de vote all round to send fur de ghos' ketcher."

Rockbound made the island it is named after come alive with real people and real language. Day wrote about the times of his day and thus provides a realistic account of the daily drudgery that kept fishermen and their families occupied from before sunrise till well past sunset. Island rivalries, shipwrecks, sly trickery, insanity caused by island birds and shotgun weddings are all covered in the story and I could not put this book down. I hope somehow to find his other novels from the twenties and thirties.