Marina Endicott

A major new novel by the award-winning author of Good to a Fault and The Little Shadows, about two sisters who live aboard a merchant ship on a fateful voyage through the South Pacific. "Up from underneath comes a blue-black swell, a whale rising in a long arc. Kay waits, hovering in the difference between herself and the creature." What is the difference between ourselves and other humans? Between human and animal? Where does that difference persist in our minds? These are the questions Marina Endicott, one of our most beloved storytellers, explores in this sweeping, intoxicating novel set on the Morning Light, a ship from Nova Scotia sailing the South Pacific in 1912. Thea and Kay are half-sisters, separated in age by more than a decade. After the death of their stern father, head of a residential school in western Canada, the elder sister, Thea, returns east for her long-awaited marriage to the captain of the ship. She cannot abandon her younger sister, so Kay joins her, and together they embark on a life-changing voyage around the world. At the heart of The Difference is one crystallizing moment in Micronesia: Thea forms a bond with a young boy from one of the islands, and takes him as her own. The repercussions of this act reverberate through the novel--forcing Kay to examine her own assumptions about what is forgivable, and what is right. Taking inspiration from the true story of a small boy who was brought on board a Canadian sailing ship in the South Seas, Marina Endicott shows us a vanished world in all its wildness and wonder, and its darkness, prejudice, and difficulty too. She also brilliantly illuminates our own times through Kay's preoccupation with the idea of "difference"--between people, classes, continents, cultures, customs, and species. A breathtaking tour-de-force by one of our most celebrated authors, a writer with the astonishing ability to bring a past world to vivid life while revealing the moral complexity of our own.

The Difference

Close to Hugh takes an exuberantly existential look at youth and age, art and life, love and death over one week in the world of gallery-owner Hugh Argylle. On Monday, a fall from a ladder leaves Hugh with a fractured vision of the pain—dying parents, shaky marriages, failure of every kind—suffered by those close to him. His friends are one missed ladder-rung from going under emotionally, physically, and financially. Somebody’s got to fix them all. And it probably has to be Hugh. Meanwhile, beneath the adult orbit, bright young lives are taking form: the sons and daughters of Hugh’s friends are about to graduate from high school and already floating away from the gravitational pull of their parents. As complicated bonds form and break in texts and ticks on multiplying media, the desires, terrors, and revelations of adolescence are mirrored in the second adolescence of the adults. With insight and mastery, Endicott creates surprising parallel worlds. Her ear for the cadences and concerns of two generations gives us both sets of friends on the cusp of reinvention. And as always in Endicott’s multi-layered fiction, below the surface tragicomedy lies something profound: a rare and rich perspective on what it means to fall and rise and fall again—and what in the end we owe to those we love.

Close to Hugh

"From a critically acclaimed and beloved storyteller comes a sweeping novel set aboard the Morning Light, a Nova Scotian merchant ship sailing through the South Pacific in 1912. Kay and Thea are half-sisters, separated in age by almost twenty years, but deeply attached. When their stern father dies, Thea travels to Nova Scotia for her long-promised marriage to the captain of the Morning Light. But she cannot abandon her orphaned young sister, so Kay too embarks on a life-changing journey to the other side of the world. At the heart of The Voyage of the Morning Light is a crystallizing moment in Micronesia: Thea, still mourning a miscarriage, forms a bond with a young boy from a remote island and takes him on board as her own son. Over time, the repercussions of this act force Kay, who considers the boy her brother, to examine her own assumptions-which are increasingly at odds with those of society around her-about what is forgivable and what is right. Inspired by a true story, Marina Endicott shows us a now-vanished world in all its wonder, and in its darkness, prejudice, and difficulty, too. She also brilliantly illuminates our present time through Kay's examination of the idea of "difference"-between people, classes, continents, cultures, customs and species. The Voyage of the Morning Light is a breathtaking novel by a writer who has an astonishing ability to bring past worlds vividly to life while revealing the moral complexity of our own"--

A Novel

The Voyage of the Morning Light

From the award-winning author of Good to a Fault and The Little Shadows, the novel Marina Endicott has waited to write for twenty years, based on her life-changing experience as the spouse of an RCMP officer. When Julia arrives in Medway in the 1990s, accompanying her beloved Hardy on his first posting as an RCMP officer, she tries to explain their new life to old friends from the city, but can find no shared vocabulary to convey this rural reality, let alone police life. As Hardy disappears into long days and nights at work, Julia takes a job as editor of the local newspaper, the Observer. Interviewing people to compose a view of the town each week, she gathers knowledge of the community’s surface joys and sorrows; meanwhile, Hardy works the harder side, immersed in violence and loss, and Julia can only witness his increasing exhaustion and despair. At first this new life together is an adventure, but as in all the best stories, time will both darken and deepen it. Grounded in the author’s experience as an RCMP member’s spouse starting in Mayerthorpe, Alberta, The Observer is a gripping, spare, emotionally complex story from one of Canada’s most beloved storytellers. Endicott writes with the understated intelligence, taut pacing, and sure insight of a master novelist, piecing together shattered memories and haunting details in a quietly devastating revelation of the fragility of life, death, and law in a tightknit and vulnerable community.

The Observer

The little shadows

Good to a fault

Little Shadows

In a novel reminiscent of the work of Penelope Lively, Anne Tyler, and Alice Munro, acclaimed author Marina Endicott gives us one of the most satisfying, most profound, and most memorable reads of the year. Absorbed in her own failings, Clara Purdy crashes her life into a sharp left turn, taking the young family in the other car along with her. When bruises on the mother, Lorraine, prove to be late-stage cancer, Clara—against all habit and comfort—moves the three children and their terrible grandmother into her own house. We know what is good, but we don't do it. In Good to a Fault, Clara decides to give it a try, and then has to cope with the consequences: exhaustion, fury, hilarity, and unexpected love. But she must question her own motives. Is she acting out of true goodness, or out of guilt? Most shamefully, has she taken over simply because she wants the baby for her own? What do we owe in this life, and what do we deserve? This compassionate, funny, and fiercely intelligent novel looks at life and death through grocery-store reading glasses: being good, being at fault, and finding some balance on the precipice.

Good To A Fault

MARINA ENDICOTT PRESENTS THE THREE GRACEFUL AVERY GIRLS THE SISTER ACT TO TAKE VAUDEVILLE BY STORM STARRING: AURORA, CLOVER and BELLA As they set off on the road to fame and fortune, the Avery sisters join a cast of extraordinary and unforgettable characters – charming charlatans, unpredictable eccentrics, and some who seem ordinary but have magical gifts. Taking us behind the curtain and into their lives, THE LITTLE SHADOWS reveals how the art of vaudeville – in all its variety, madness, melodrama, hilarity and sorrow – echoes the art of life itself.

The Little Shadows

“There’s heartbreak, there’s joy, there are parts where you cry—and it’s very high quality writing. Well done!” — Margaret Atwood “Unpretentious and affecting, with characters to remember and themes that linger and resound.” — Meg Wolitzer, New York Times bestselling author of The Ten-Year Nap Marina Endicott’s Good to a Fault wrings suspense and humor out of the everyday choices we make, revealing the delicate balance between sacrifice and self-interest, between doing good and being good. In the vein of the novels of Carol Shields and Ann Patchett, Good to a Fault is a “witty, wise. . . . [and] brilliantly paced” (Colm Tóibín) delight.

Good To a Fault

From one of our most critically acclaimed and beloved storytellers comes a sweeping novel set on board the Morning Light, a Nova Scotian merchant ship sailing through the south pacific in 1912. Kay and Thea are half-sisters, separated in age by almost twenty years, but deeply attached. When their stern father dies, Thea returns to Nova Scotia for her long-promised marriage to the captain of the Morning Light. But she cannot abandon her orphaned young sister, so Kay too embarks on a life-changing voyage to the other side of the world. At the heart of The Difference is a crystallizing moment in Micronesia: Thea, still mourning a miscarriage, forms a bond with a young boy from a remote island and takes him on board as her own son. Over time, the repercussions of this act force Kay, who considers the boy her brother, to examine her own assumptions--which are increasingly at odds with those of society around her--about what is forgivable and what is right. Inspired by a true story, Endicott shows us a now-vanished world in all its wonder, and in its darkness, prejudice and difficulty, too. She also brilliantly illuminates our present time through Kay's examination of the idea of "difference"--between people, classes, continents, cultures, customs and species. The Difference is a breathtaking novel by a writer with an astonishing ability to bring past worlds vividly to life while revealing the moral complexity of our own.

Marina Endicott

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