The Big Why

Read an extract from The Big Why here.Michael Winter's powerful new novel, The Big Why, brilliantly fictionalizes a pivotal year in the life of celebrated American artist Rockwell Kent. In 1914, at the age of thirty, Kent decides to escape the superficial world of New York City and move to Brigus, Newfoundland, with his wife and three children to follow a few months later. A socialist and a philanderer, certain in the greatness of his work, he is drawn north by a fascination for the rocky Atlantic coast and by the example of Brigus's other well-known resident, fabled Arctic explorer Robert Bartlett. But once in Newfoundland, Kent discovers that notoriety is even easier to achieve in a small town than in New York. As events come to a head both internationally and domestically and the war begins, Kent becomes a polarizing figure in this intimate, impoverished community, where everyone knows everyone and any outsider is suspect, possibly even a German spy. Writing in Kent's voice, Michael Winter delivers a passionate, witty, and cerebral exploration of what makes exceptional individuals who they are-and why. Shortlisted for the Trillium Award "Wonderful...engaging, funny, keenly observed, [and] disarmingly wise...read-again beautiful."-Globe & Mail [An] exceptionally fine novel...Winter...makes Kent suddenly, overpoweringly present in descriptions and reflections that are as immediate as one man's thoughts and as deft as an artist's sketch...Inspired by Kent's autobiography, Winter brilliantly exposes his subject's inner life while at the same time revealing Newfoundland and the inhabitants of Brigus to be just as idiosyncratic as the artist who is observing them."-Boston Globe "Winter's short sentences and clipped descriptions resemble the austere, architectural lines of Kent's art as well as the dramatic and cold beauty of Newfoundland. For those who've developed an appreciation for this sort of beauty - e.g., if y A wild and bravely written novel that shatters the spine of 'historical fiction.'-Michael Ondaatje