Three different fishing communities, three different countries, but in their pursuit of fish on the banks they would have much in common, including the terrors of the North Atlantic storms.

The August Gales is a richly detailed history of the banks fishery, the perils of the North Atlantic, and more specifically, the three powerful, and ultimately deadly, August storms that devastated not only an industry, but entire communities. The great gale of 1873, which struck near the eastern mainland of Nova Scotia, was only a prelude to the gales of 1926 and 1927, which brought unthinkable grief to the towns of Lunenburg and Gloucester as well as the island of Newfoundland. (On one fateful day, a woman in the village of Blue Rocks, near Lunenburg, lost her husband, two of his brothers, and three of her own brothers.) Impeccably researched and with over 40 black and white images, The August Gales is a fascinating and at times moving account of the schooners that made their living, and met their end, in the famed North Atlantic gales.

Gerald Hallowell was born in Port Hope, Ontario, and grew up on a nearby farm. A graduate of the University of Toronto and Carleton University, he worked for over twenty years as an editor at the University of Toronto Press, retiring as senior editor, Canadian history, in 2000. In 1996 he was elected for a three-year term to the council of the Canadian Historical Association. He edited The Oxford Companion to Canadian History, published in 2004. His previous book, The August Gales: The Tragic Loss of Fishing Schooners in the North Atlantic, 1926 and 1927, won the Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing in 2014. Since 1989 he has lived in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia.

Gerald Hallowell's profile page

• Winner, Atlantic Book Awards, Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing