This is the first publication in 13 years for Gordon Rodgers, the author of two previous books of poetry and a novella. Despite its academic sounding title, this first novel, the colourful and spirited story of an orphan who becomes a charismatic union organizer in turn-of-the-century Newfoundland, is anything but drab.

In short, snappy chapters of bell-clear prose the story of Tom Vincent unfolds. Orphaned when his widowed father dies while working in unsafe conditions at a foundry, 14-year-old Tom is offered, partly out of the foundry owner’s guilt, the management of a tiny store on isolated Reach Run Island.

With a poet’s touch for language Rodgers spins a story that has real life parallels with the career of Newfoundland’s William Coaker, founder of the Fishermen’s Protective Union. Tom stays for 15 years on the island, becoming a telegrapher, buying a farm, and learning that he has, along with a self-taught knowledge of herbs, the ability to heal. He becomes a fisherman and discovers how merchants arbitrarily set low cod prices, keeping the fishermen forever in their debt. Bit by bit he establishes a Fishermen’s Collective, and over time the fishermen outdo the merchants at their own game.

In the tradition of power defending itself with violence, Tom proves no exception. He squelches dissenters within the union by burning them out of a secret meeting, while in return, after Tom is elected to the Newfoundland parliament, his enemies try every trick – legal and illegal – to drive him from power.

Rodgers’ characters spring alive from the page to the point where I forgot I was reading fiction, as I was so engrossed in the life and trials of Tom Vincent. All history should be this vital and readable.