Frank Parker Day Books

"Rockbound," as stated in the title, is the name of a small fake island inspired by East Ironbound, a tiny fictional island off the coast of Nova Scotia. Rich but hazardous fishing grounds surround Rockbound; storms, fog, and winter weather isolate her. The strictly moral and greedy Uriah Jung dominates two rival families, the Jungs and the Krauses. A brutal, regimented environment confronts the teenage David Jung when he arrives on Rockbound to choose his inheritance, a small portion of the island. His tensions, both internal and external, keep him in a survival fight. Whether it's the water, his negative actions, his closest friend, or his secret affection for the island teacher, his adversaries are always defined by his family's ambitions for wealth and power. Rockbound presents a picture of relentless effort, clever hatred, and familial discord in the years before World War I. Based on the loss of the fishing schooner Sylvia Mosher on August 9, 1926, during the 1926 August Gales near Sable Island, the book conjures the Atlantic Ocean's unfathomable strength, horror, and brutal beauty.

To the harsh domain of Rockbound -- governed by the sternly righteous and rapacious Uriah Jung --comes the youthful David Jung to claim his small share of the island. Filled with dreamy optimism and a love for the unspoken promises of the night sky, David tries to find his way in a narrow, unforgiving, and controlled world. His conflicts are both internal and external, locking him in an unceasing struggle for survival; sometimes the sea is his enemy, sometimes his own rude behavior, sometimes his best friend Gershom Born, sometimes his secret love for the island teacher Mary Dauphiny; but always, inevitably, his Jung relatives and their manifold ambitions for money and power.The balance of life on Rockbound is precarious and thus fiercely guarded by all who inhabit its lonely domain, but just as a sudden change in the direction of the wind can lead to certain peril at sea, so too can the sudden change in the direction of a man's heart lead to a danger altogether unknown.Enormously evocative of the power, terror, and dramatic beauty of the Atlantic sea, and unrelenting in its portrait of back-breaking labour, cunning bitterness, and family strife, Rockbound is a story of many passions-love, pride, greed, and yearning -- all formed and buffeted on a small island by an unyielding wind and the rocky landscape of the human spirit.Roockbound won Canada Reads in 2005.