"Your life story didn’t begin with you. It reaches back to the beginning of time. You rose from the bodies of your ancestors. You're the witness to their existence."
There is nothing more alive than the sea, nothing more deadly . . .
Two childhood friends, Maggie and Elizabeth, are irrevocably joined by their love for one man lost on the Southern Cross, a brother to one and a groom-to-be of the other. Lives of families come into focus against the background of the island of Newfoundland, taking readers on a journey beginning more than a century ago and continuing to the 1970s.
The lost vessel becomes a ghostly presence along the rugged shores of Newfoundland during a torturous wait for news, a lingering disruption in people’s lives that brings no relief. A loss comes for which the church offers solace, the graveyard none.
Motivated by her family connection to the disappearance of the Southern Cross and its 174 sealers during the March 1914 voyage to the icefields, the author stitches together the lives of women and men cut from strong, enduring fabrics.

Nellie P. Strowbridge is one of Newfoundland and Labrador’s most beloved, prolific, and respected authors. She is the winner of provincial and national awards and has been published nationally and internationally. Her work is capsuled in the National Archives as Newfoundland’s winner in Canada’s Stamp of Approval Award for a letter written to Canada 2117.Strowbridge, a former columnist and editorial writer, an essayist and an award-winning poet, is a seventeen-time winner in the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Awards. She has been Writer in the Library, a mentor to young writers, an adjudicator in the Provincial Arts and Letters Awards, an assessor on the Newfoundland and Labrador Grants Committee, and a judge on the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards. She has held school workshops in Canada and Ireland and also hosted a Seminar/Gabfest for International Women’s Day in Cobh, Ireland, where she was writer-in-residence. The Canadian Embassy in Dublin also sponsored a reading and reception. She has also read from her work during a bus tour in Scotland.Nellie is a member of The Writers’ Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador, The Writers’ Union of Canada, The League of Canadian Poets (Newfoundland and Nova Scotia Representative 2009), and Page One.Previous books: Widdershins: Stories of a Fisherman’s Daughter; Doors Held Ajar (tri-author with Isobel Brown and Peggy Krachun); Shadows of the Heart; Dancing on Ochre Sands (shortlisted for the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards - E. J. Pratt Poetry Award, 2005, and long listed for the ReLit Awards, 2005); Far From Home: Dr. Grenfell’s Little Orphan (a bestseller, shortlisted for the Heritage and History Award, 2006); The Gift of Christmas (reviewed by the Aurora as a Newfoundland and Labrador classic); The Newfoundland Tongue (a bestseller); Catherine Snow (a bestseller); and Maiden from the Sea (a favourite of many readers).

Nellie P. Strowbridge's profile page

• Short-listed, Heritage and History Book Awards, Fiction Category