On paper the plot of Honour Thy Mother, by Newfoundland writer T.C. Badcock, looks good. A young woman arrives in an outport one fall day. She turns out to be pregnant and dies in childbirth, leaving her children and a small fortune in the care of a kindly fisherman and his wife. Much later it turns out that she had been fleeing an abusive husband whose businesses have been ripping off Newfoundland fisherfolk for years. Her daughter, now a lawyer, decides to take the bad guys on, as well as uncover the mystery surrounding her mother.

But the novel falters on the page. Despite close plotting and several violent scenes, the story dies in the telling. At least three times children are said to have “the time of their lives,” and I lost count of how many “wonderful meals” they eat. People are always taking showers or baths, and we learn exactly the minute things happen – the first sentence is “Francine stepped off the boat onto the community wharf at exactly 10:00 a.m. on November 12th, 1951.” It is as if Badcock had been told he needed to give details about his characters, but doesn’t have the eye to record carefully what evokes the lives his people lead. To fill space he puts down boring trivia that has little relevance to either his characters or his plot.

Breakwater Books’ website says that Honour Thy Mother is the first of a projected quartet of novels with “honour” in their title. Before Badcock goes any further with this project, he would do well to read fellow Newfoundlanders Robin McGrath, Wayne Johnston, and Dawn Rae Downton. They might give him some hints on how to tell stories with details that not only further the plot but also help the reader see and understand the motivations of the characters and the drama that is Newfoundland.