Finding Edward

by Sheila Murray

Overview

Shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award
Longlisted for the Toronto Book Awards
Longlisted for Canada Reads 2023
A Globe and Mail Best Book

Cyril Rowntree migrates to Toronto from Jamaica in 2012. Managing a precarious balance of work and university he begins to navigate his way through the implications of being racialized in his challenging new land.

A chance encounter with a panhandler named Patricia leads Cyril to a suitcase full of photographs and letters dating back to the early 1920s. Cyril is drawn into the letters and their story of a white mother’s struggle with the need to give up her mixed race baby, Edward. Abandoned by his own white father as a small child, Cyril’s keen intuition triggers a strong connection and he begins to look for the rest of Edward’s story.

As he searches, Cyril unearths fragments of Edward’s itinerant life as he crisscrossed the country. Along the way, he discovers hidden pieces of Canada’s Black history and gains the confidence to take on his new world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781770866263
Publisher:	Cormorant Books
Publication date:	07/19/2022
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	5.43(w) x 8.43(h) x 1.18(d)

About the Author

Sheila Murray’s short fiction has been published in many literary journals including Descant, The Dalhousie Review, and The New Quarterly. Finding Edward is her first novel. Murray is an advocate for social justice and currently leads a grassroots, volunteer-driven initiative that engages urban residents in adapting to local climate change impacts. She was born and raised in St. Albans, England, and now lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

What People are Saying About This

Rachel Manley

“A remarkable novel. In this, her first, Sheila Murray has created a haunting allegory out of the Caribbean’s relationship with Canada. Cyril leaves Jamaica for Toronto, where he discovers that the real education he will need for ‘a better life’ involves an exploration of the life of a man born seven decades before him. Edward’s lonely journey of social marginalization takes him from Africville to the lumber camps of British Columbia across much of the twentieth century; his life of adversity and poverty in a country yet to recognize its racist policies and practices is a parallel to the life Cyril is trying to forge anew. This novel is a great achievement; it reminds us that the surmountable obstacles facing us in any age are frequently unfounded and misinformed prejudices.”

Donna Bailey Nurse

“In lucid, scintillating prose, suffused with mystery and everyday magic, Sheila Murray delivers one of the most penetrating dramas of Black experience in all of Canadian literature. This tale of a lonely Jamaican student enrolled at Ryerson University follows his obsession with the life of a struggling Black boy in Depression-era Toronto. A parallel portrait of two Black bi-racial men, Finding Edward expands to enfold a sweeping history of Blacks in Canada. This beautiful, necessary novel will become a touchstone.”

Editorial Reviews

Powerful”

Open Book

Sheila Murray’s debut novel Finding Edward is a significant literary work that gives a voice to the voiceless and infuses the present with a previously unrecorded past, bridging much of the black experience in twentieth century Canada, from Africville to the lumber camps of British Columbia.”

Rebel Women Lit - Mason Haigh

Sheila Murray writes lush descriptions and dialogue with the density and harmony of a symphony. … Finding Edward is both an engagingly executed and compelling fictional tale and an important historical document.”

World Literature Today - Gloria Blizzard

Finding Edward is … both a serious look at societal stagnation and change as well as a tender tale of what it means to be biracial in Canada in two different eras and provinces, which makes this redemptive, intimate, and special novel well worth reading.”

The Dalhousie Review - Victoria Gibson-Billings

A tremendous debut novel that captivates you from the first sentence to the last. A beautiful tale told with deep humanity, so raw and real, it could only be written from the soul. Sheila Murray’s prose is exquisite, and her gift for storytelling is a delight and a treasure.”

The Globe and Mail

Murray’s rich narrative offers mystery, but it also spans decades of Canadian history, differentiating Finding Edward from the typical immigrant story. The prospect of better understanding Edward’s life in Canada offers Cyril an escape from his own excruciating isolation. Murray triumphs in capturing the undeniable and unmistakable ache of severe loneliness.

Quill & Quire - Whitney French

… Finding Edward offers readers a clear-sighted and deeply felt novel, which reminds us there are more ways of knowing what happened in the past than just knowing what happened. This is a powerful debut that considers the history and the present of Black people through a truly vibrant set of characters.”

Literary Review of Canada - Véronique Darwin

…Finding Edward offers readers a clear-sighted and deeply felt novel, which reminds us there are more ways of knowing what happened in the past than just knowing what happened. This is a powerful debut that considers the history and the present of Black people through a truly vibrant set of characters.

Literary Review of Canada

Sheila Murray’s debut novel Finding Edward is a significant literary work that gives a voice to the voiceless and infuses the present with a previously unrecorded past, bridging much of the black experience in twentieth century Canada, from Africville to the lumber camps of British Columbia.

Rebel Women Lit

Murray’s rich narrative offers mystery, but it also spans decades of Canadian history, differentiating Finding Edward from the typical immigrant story… Much of the history is well-woven into the narrative, though secondary characters often function as mouthpieces for tidbits of Black Canadian history.

Quill & Quire