First Snow, Last Light

In the chill hush that precedes the first storm of the winter of 1936, 14-year-old Ned Vatcher comes home from school to find the house locked, the family car missing, and his parents, Edgar and Megan Vatcher, gone without a trace. From that moment on, Ned’s life is driven by the need to find out what happened to the 'Vanished Vatchers.' His father, born to a poor family of fishermen, had suffered an unexpected fall from grace after rising to become the right-hand man to the colony's prime minister. As Ned is enmeshed in the family of his missing father—including his grandparents, Nan and Reg, and Uncle Cyril—he discovers they are also haunted by the inexplicable disappearance of a third Vatcher, a young man lost at sea years earlier. Spanning fifty years, the novel follows Ned as he becomes Newfoundland's first media mogul, building an empire to insulate himself from loss. Two figures loom large in his life: a Jesuit priest, Father Duggan, and the enigmatic, boozy journalist Sheilagh Fielding, who sees a surrogate for her own lost children in Ned. The story builds to a spectacular resolution of the mystery of all the Vanished Vatchers.

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