Rating: 3.5

This is a lively and entertaining but imperfect young adult novel set in a 1960s Newfoundland outport near the Bay of Islands in the western part of the province. At the time the story opens, Cox’s Cove, population 400, is accessible only by ferry. This hamlet, where houses lack electricity and plumbing, is entirely cut off from the rest of the island during the winter. Every June for the last eight years, Kate Derby, one of three teenaged cousins at the center of the story, arrives by ferry. She stays until September. As a child, Kate was sickly, and it was thought that the sea air would do her good. It did. Now 15, she’s arrived for yet another season of wind and sunshine, skinny-dipping and berry-picking with cousins Melinda and Rebecca. The girls are said to have been born within seven months of each other.

This is a summer of change for all of them. Melinda—the feisty, talkative narrator—is the cleverest girl at her tiny school. Her mother wants her to train as a nurse, like her intimidating aunt, Grace, (Rebecca’s mother), but Melinda has her heart set on marrying Matt Lewis, who, at 22, is seven years older than she. He’s already given her a ring and has started building a home for the two, which he works at over the summer when he’s not away at his fishing camp. In Cook’s Cove, a 21-year-old woman is an “old maid”. It’s typical for girls to be married and having babies by the age of 16. In 1960, the legal marriageable age for girls in Newfoundland was 12.

As members of the respected, once-wealthy Derby family (which used to own a fleet of schooners), the three cousins are expected to do something more with their lives than the other girls from the Cove. Rebecca is a head-turner, a beautiful girl, who, to this point, has shown no interest in boys. She’s studious and artistic, and Aunt Grace’s plan for her daughter is teachers’ college in St. Johns, the provincial capital. Kate, from Cornerbrook (the biggest town on the western side of the island), is also bright and bookish, entirely inattentive to her appearance, and set on attending university. She knows she’ll have to get a scholarship because her parents, who disapprove of higher education for girls, will certainly not foot the bill.

The story is set in motion by the arrival of a stranger, a Mr. Franklin Harris, a wealthy banker, who’s up from Boston in his yacht. He attends the Cove’s annual garden party, a kind of fun fair with stalls for selling baked goods and handicrafts. Funds raised go to the local Anglican church. Mr. Harris sees the deft sketches that Rebecca does of the locals for fifty cents a piece and speaks to her mother about his big bank’s association with an art college and its funding of the college’s program for budding young artists. He’d like to see Rebecca attend. It would all be fully financed, and Melinda could go along as well. Aunt Grace is mysteriously, vehemently opposed. The three cousins cannot understand why: attending an art school would be a dream come true for Rebecca.

Thinking they can get the ball rolling for Rebecca, they manage to locate Rebecca’s birth certificate, which she needs in order to cross the border. (Aunt Grace has hidden it.) It turns out Rebecca is a whole year older than she’s been made out to be. Grace has kept secrets, which Melinda manages to get to the bottom of before anyone else. Does she tell her cousin, Rebecca, these secrets, risk the reputation of the family and cause real hurt to some of its members, but possibly set Rebecca free from a limited life in this coastal community—or does Melinda keep the secrets? I won’t say what she decides to do, but it was not what I expected.

Sheppard’s novel provides a slice of life in a small Newfoundland outport. While such a place is not without its charm, there is certainly hardship here. Sheppard does not shy away from pointing out the alcoholism, domestic abuse, and child neglect. The sea, of course, claims the lives of many men, who fish for three seasons of the year and often work in lumbering during the winter. For women, there are multiple pregnancies and long, back-breaking shifts in the fish plant. During the winter, there’s often not enough to eat; people go hungry. There’s endless gossip, and, of course, secrets. (At one point in the book, Aunt Grace--as the local nurse--has the opportunity to expose to the authorities the domestic abuse that has taken the life of a young pregnant woman. She chooses not to. What happens in the Cove stays in the Cove. The code of silence is strong, and women are deeply complicit.) Melinda learns more than her aunt’s secret in this story. She also learns new things about her mother’s and her Nan’s lives. Strangely or not, Melinda still wants to continue in this place. As the story ends, however, she wishes that any daughter she has will use the newly completed road as a route out, away from this place and into the wider world. ( )

Excellent teen book about friendship and rural life in Newfoundland.