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Dream of the DoveBruce Graham224 pages Order this book from:
Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9) Shortlisted for the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction. |
![[Cover of Dream of the Dove]](../images/1895900565.jpg)
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Dream of the Dove is a novel about one man who sailed the seas - the uncompromising story of a Nova Scotia sea captain, the life he led, the women he loved, the men he sailed with, and the ships that carried him all over the world. James Allen Graham witnesses both the apex and decline of the age of sail. He first goes to sea in the spring of 1860, just in time to find himself in the midst of the American Civil War where his ship is held captive by the Confederate Navy in Charleston.
At 55, he is captain of the most beautiful ship ever to grace the eastern seaboard. At 60, however, he is down on his luck, living at the Seaman's Mission on State Street in New York and working as a night watchman on the East River docks. At 65 he is alone, nearly blind and trying to make sense of his life.
More than anything he is haunted by the Dove. The final voyage of the Dove was the most harrowing experience of all. He remembers starving men with frozen hands, listening as their ship breaks apart under them. Like so many other things, that vision has never left him. Ragged sails and hollow-eyed mates keep drifting into his consciousness until he feels the rolling deck and hears the tortured screams of twisted timbers.
Excerpt from Dream of the Dove:
If only an outsider could have witnessed it. Crazy men with wracked bodies and swollen tongues, some in their underwear dancing as if their feet were on a hot stove. So weak we could hardly move, yet jumping for joy. Opening our mouths trying to get the hail. Running for buckets to gather the stones. Every pot in the galley was full and we burned the last of our firewood to melt the hail. We drank, coughed and gagged and drank some more.
Bruce Graham has been described as one of the most dynamic writers and speakers in Canada. A multi-media man, Bruce has worked in every level of television news. In the printed word, his novel The Parrsboro Boxing Club was described by The Globe and Mail as "compelling."
Bruce's nightly television commentaries have covered every subject under the sun and earned him an Atlantic Journalism Award.
He has travelled extensively in the Middle East, Puerto Rico, the South Pacific, Europe, and Asia. For several years Bruce was news director at CKY in Winnipeg. He anchored the ATV News in Halifax for a decade and later became the first news director at MITV (now Global Television) in Dartmouth. Bruce travels frequently, speaks often, and lives on the shores of Armstrong Lake in Southwest Hants County, Nova Scotia.
He is also the author of: Diligent River Daughter, Anchorman, The Parrsboro Boxing Club, and Ivor Johnson's Neighbours.