Bishop's Road is set in contemporary St. John's and tells the story of a year in the lives of a handful of odd characters, women mostly, shaken out of their pathetic complacency by a teenage delinquent with magic in her eyes.

Catherine Hogan Safer was born in Newfoundland's Codroy Valley and raised in Gander. Over the years she has been a waitress, bartender, flight attendant, real estate agent, restaurant manager, book promoter and on and on. She prefers writing, painting and gardening to any of those, though the money is not as good. Her work has been well-received. Bishop's Road was short-listed for the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada first novel award. What if Your Mom Made Raisin Buns? was short-listed for the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award and won the Marianna Dempster Award in Nova Scotia. Catherine is not a prolific writer. She has to be in the mood. She took up painting two years ago in the hope that her muse might be hanging about the acrylics. She wasn't, although the writing has become a little more abstract. Catherine lives in St. John's, Newfoundland, a marvelous terrible place which she adores and despises in equal measure.

Catherine Hogan Safer's profile page

• Short-listed, Amazon.ca First Novel Award

“There is a day in February when the sun is warm and snow melts a little and you can open the windows and air the house as long as you remember to close them again when it gets dark. It is a reprieve for people in places like this. A short reminder that the season will not last forever. And in March when the rest of the country is shaking off the cold for good and you still can’t see over the snow banks to the sidewalk, you remember that day in February when you opened the windows and aired the house and you are strengthened for the duration.”

In the overcrowded world of up-and-coming Newfoundland authors, Safer hasn’t received as much recognition as she deserves for Bishop’s Road, but anyone who lives here should recognize that that paragraph alone is worth a literary prize.

But when I accepted that I was in a world where miracles, reincarnation, and magic can happen just off Water Street, I found myself enjoying the ride, and caring about the fate of the wonderfully eccentric characters with which Safer has peopled the house on Bishop’s Road.