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Writing the Sea by Cassie Brown
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Writing the Sea (original 2005; edition 2005)

by Cassie Brown (Author)

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Cassie Brown is one of Canada's best-known writers of sea tragedies. Her three classic tales were published by Doubleday Canada in the 1970s. However, before this, she was prolific as a journalist, scriptwriter, and publisher of her own monthly magazine.   Writing the Sea includes an autobiographical essay on Ms. Brown's formative years in a remote coastal Newfoundland village. In "Rose Blanche and Me" she describes her hometown and the adventures that influenced the writings in her adult life.   Also included in this volume are a dozen stories she wrote as a journalist for The Daily News, including the seminal story she was assigned to write, "Death March," to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the most famous sealing disaster in Canada's history. This tragic tale motivated her to leave the security of a salaried job as a journalist and to conduct further research. This resulted in the classic book Death on the Ice.   Other sea stories describe the sinking of the SS Caribou by enemy action in World War II, the wreck of the SS Florizel, mutiny on the SS Diana, and "Tragedy at St. Jacques Island."   Upon publication of her three non-fiction bestsellers in the 1970s, the author became much in demand by schools to visit and discuss her books, which were used in the classroom. Included here is a question-and-answer interview Cassie Brown held with a high-school class in Newfoundland, in which she reflects on her path to full-time writing, her influences, her methodology, her favourites, and advice for would-be writers.… (more)
Member:fogoinn
Title:Writing the Sea
Authors:Cassie Brown (Author)
Info:Flanker Press (2005), Edition: First Printing, 164 pages
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Tags:biography

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Writing the Sea by Cassie Brown (2005)

AAF (1) biography (1) caribou (1) essays (1) Florizel (1) history (1) jmb (1) Newfoundland (2) NL (1) non-fiction (1) shipwreck (1) shipwrecks (1)
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Although the writing here may be a bit dated and perhaps not as inspired as one might hope for, the portrait these short essay paints of life on the North Atlantic is riveting. Ms. Brown, who died in 1986 was a journalist, author, publisher and editor born in Rose Blanche, Newfoundland, Canada, in 1919, and moved to St. John's with her family in the 1930s. She is best known for her books "Death on the Ice" and "The Wreck of the Florizel." (Although I haven't read those books, I'm now most curious to do so.)

Life on "The Rock", as Newfoundland is known, is hard, and the people tough. In this collection Brown focuses on the various tragedies at sea and on the ice during the seal hunts and the second World War, as well as one particularly poignant account of a terrible storm taking the lives of two lighthouse keepers. For someone like myself, who was raised far from the sea, the power of the sea as well as the courage of those who make their living upon it is both heart-breaking and astounding. Brown writes in the matter-of-fact way of newspaper writers in the early 20th c. There is little romance, nothing of the 'creative non-fiction' approach readers are now accustomed to, and there is power in the unadorned method, juxtaposed again these terrible events.

The most personal essays come early in the book when Brown writes about her strict, children-should-be-seen-and-not-heard upbringing in Rose Blanche, and the three times the sea nearly claimed her as a child.

All in all a wonderful introduction to life on "The Rock" during the period and the bravery of those who go down to the sea in ships. ( )
  Laurenbdavis | Jul 8, 2012 |
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FOREWORD [by Garry Cranford]
Writing the Sea includes those short stories previously published in the book The Caribou Disaster and Other Short Stories, a collection of articles and features from the pates of the St. John's daily newspaper The Daily News, written in the period 1959-1966, when Ms. Brown worked as a report and, later, as women's editor.
Rose Blanche and Me
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It was an inglorious nickname, but from the first breath of life, my family says, I opened my mouth and yelled bloody murder.
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Cassie Brown is one of Canada's best-known writers of sea tragedies. Her three classic tales were published by Doubleday Canada in the 1970s. However, before this, she was prolific as a journalist, scriptwriter, and publisher of her own monthly magazine.   Writing the Sea includes an autobiographical essay on Ms. Brown's formative years in a remote coastal Newfoundland village. In "Rose Blanche and Me" she describes her hometown and the adventures that influenced the writings in her adult life.   Also included in this volume are a dozen stories she wrote as a journalist for The Daily News, including the seminal story she was assigned to write, "Death March," to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the most famous sealing disaster in Canada's history. This tragic tale motivated her to leave the security of a salaried job as a journalist and to conduct further research. This resulted in the classic book Death on the Ice.   Other sea stories describe the sinking of the SS Caribou by enemy action in World War II, the wreck of the SS Florizel, mutiny on the SS Diana, and "Tragedy at St. Jacques Island."   Upon publication of her three non-fiction bestsellers in the 1970s, the author became much in demand by schools to visit and discuss her books, which were used in the classroom. Included here is a question-and-answer interview Cassie Brown held with a high-school class in Newfoundland, in which she reflects on her path to full-time writing, her influences, her methodology, her favourites, and advice for would-be writers.

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