Keziah Donovan takes her audience back to a landscape and language apart as she reflects on her life from her deathbed.
“Eighty-four years is time enough for one life,” Keziah Donovan muses as she waits for death to re-unite her with her “own sweet man”. Stricken down by a paralytic stroke, Keziah’s body is immobile but her mind is on a journey through a life that spans two centuries.
Carried along by her rich inner narrative, the reader travels through the disease, labour, and progress of tumultuous times and the equally turbulent events of personal history – births, marriages, deaths, and mysteries.
Set in rural and urban Newfoundland, this novel is alive with its landscape and language. In Keziah Donovan, award-winning writer Robin McGrath has created an unforgettable story-teller with a voice so authentic and distinctive that it compels the reader to sit and listen, and rings in the ear long after the book is put down.
Originally published by Killick Press in 2002.
