Thomas H. Raddall (1903–1994)

4.5 stars

This sounds cheesy, but it's not. It's a beautiful picture, caught in time, of this province I have come to call 'home'.

Published 1950 set 1920& 21 in Nova Scotia (Halifax & Annapolis Valley) and on offshore island of Marina. (I was reading a library copy of an old first first edition. What a treat!)

Matthew Carney, Operator-in-Charge, comes ashore for his three-month leave to find his mother who gave him up to an orphanage when she married a man that was not his father. (His show more father was a Norwegian sailor who impregnated her.)

Meets and falls in love with Isabel Jardine who is working in the shipping office in Halifax. They marry on the spur of the moment & she moves to Marina, where she adjusts badly, especially as winter sets in and Matthew withdraws (we find out at the end that he knew he was going blind but did not tell her).

Isabel has an affair with 2nd in command, Greg Skane, & is shot by a jealous island girl, transported to hospital on the mainland, and after release moves to the Valley & gets a job as personal assistant to a self-made millionaire who loses it all in the recession of 1921.

Skane tracks her down just then and wants to take her away to Montreal. She has almost accepted when he plays what he feels is his trump card: that Matthew is going blind and deceived her. She realizes that Matthew loved her all along and returns to Marina. show less

A classic Maritime story. Timeless, well told tale of hard won love and redemption. Published in 1950, Raddall's The Nymph and the Lamp was the first novel he wrote set in a near contemporary period (1920s Halifax and Sable Island). The compelling story of Matthew Carney and Isabel Jardine eschews fake charm and sentiment in favour of a kind of rough-hewn realism and is surprisingly modern in its attitudes. This novel is a triumph of storytelling.

Well worth reading for its representation of the history of conflict between the French and English in Acadie/Nova Scotia. Features a deeply unlikable protagonist, but he doesn't get in the way too much, and the plot moves along nicely (the novel spans ten years).

A beautifully blended novel of romance and historical fact about Halifax, Nova Scotia.