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Map showing the location of Scene at Fort Amherst, St. John's Narrows in Newfoundland and Labrador
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Scene

Scene at Fort Amherst, St. John's Narrows

from Cloud of Bone · by Bernice Morgan · set at Fort Amherst, St. John's Narrows

❝ Scene

Fort Amherst, St. John's Narrows

“They have been climbing forever — sea, sky, earth — even time itself has dissolved in fog. The road, little more than a ledge hacked into rock, is now so narrow that they are forced to walk single file…praying they will not step into air, plummet downward into the ocean they cannot see but can hear — a dull, repetitive heave of wave on rock, cut now and then by the razor wail of a foghorn far out beyond Fort Amherst.”

Morgan's opening procession is anchored explicitly to Fort Amherst at the entrance to St. John's harbour, with the South Side / St. Mary's Church setting confirmed by Robin McGrath's review.

Bernice Morgan, Cloud of Bone (Knopf Canada, 2007), publisher excerpt — source

Cover of Cloud of Bone by Bernice Morgan (2007)
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From the bestselling author of Random Passage and Waiting for Time comes a masterful, engrossing story of the last surviving Beothuk, a World War II deserter, and a recently widowed English woman. Three stories come together to make both an intriguing mystery and a meditation on lost innocence, brutality and the power of memory. During WWII Newfoundlander Kyle Holloway deserts from the Royal Navy and hides in a cave below St. Mary's Church. Over a century earlier, Shanawdithit, a young Beothuk girl, becomes the only witness that the Beothuk once walked the earth. In 1998, Judith Muir's husband is killed in Rwanda; she returns to England, where an unusual discovery takes her on a quest that will inextricably connect her life to the lives of Shanawdithit and Kyle Holloway. source

Places

  • Set atFort Amherst, St. John's Narrows↗

    Distinct from the Fort Amherst entry already in the Atlas: this opening climb leads to St. Mary's Church on the south side of the harbour, where Holloway hides in the cavern beneath; CBC Books reproduces the opening verbatim.

    Bernice Morgan, Cloud of Bone (Knopf Canada, 2007), opening passage as published on CBC Books — source

Tags

GriefElegiacColonial eraNovelIndigenous experience

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References

  1. 1.Scene source — Bernice Morgan, Cloud of Bone (Knopf Canada, 2007), publisher excerpt
  2. 2.Place link (Fort Amherst, St. John's Narrows): Bernice Morgan, Cloud of Bone (Knopf Canada, 2007), opening passage as published on CBC Books