Some people age gracefully as wisdom and calm come with the grey hair. Others become crotchety, opinionated, and odd. People avoid them and laugh at them. Still others give up on life, on ambition, on dreams, and settle into a pleasant wait for the grave. I was one of those people.

Felix Ryan, from Curlew, Conception Bay, is a schoolteacher on the edge of a cliff in a serious mid-life crisis. But a phone call from Tammy, an ex-girlfriend, calls him back home to help his eccentric father in his latest crusade. A big US oil company has begun fracking in his hometown. Led by a jovial Texan and represented by a crack young lawyer, the company is buying up land. The town is split in two over fracking and its new prosperity.

Sparks of attraction fly between Felix and Tammy, even though he jilted her years before. Felix's father leads the fight against the oil company, and Felix is drawn further into the fight. As the battle lines are drawn in the sand, he finds a new direction in his life, a woman who loves him, and a cause worth fighting for.

From the author of The Sign on My Father’s House- Winner of the CBC’s NL Reads 2020 Competition

Tom Moore is an award-winning writer in St. John’s, Newfoundland. His first novel, Good-Bye Momma, became a Canadian bestseller and won a “Children’s Choice” award from the Children’s Book Centre in Toronto. It was translated into Danish in 1982 and into Romanian in 1979. The CBC produced a radio play version, and The Canadian Book of Lists named it one of the best children’s books in Canada.In 1994, Angels Crying became his second national bestseller. It was required reading at schools of social work, including Memorial University, Dalhousie University, College of the North Atlantic, and the University of Maine at Presque Isle. It was translated into Chinese in 2002.In 2000, Ghost World won the inaugural Percy Janes award for best novel manuscript. “The Summer My Mother Died,” a short story, was a winning entry in Canadian Storyteller, Toronto, in the summer of 2004. He also published The Black Heart, a collection of poetry, and Wilfred Grenfell, a children’s biography.Tom’s poems “Ancestors,” “Songs,” and “Caplin Scull” were broadcast as operatic song settings on CBC Radio by Lynn Channing, Music Department University of Calgary, and “Songs” by Peter Mannion and the Galway University Choir in Ireland. In 1997, “Ancestors” was read for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on her visit to Bonavista.His novel The Sign on My Father’s House won the NL Reads 2020 competition, the Margaret Duley Fiction Award, and the NL Public Libraries called it “the must-read book for 2020.” Moore is the only writer to win both the Percy Janes award and the Margaret Duley award for fiction.His short story “Pegasus” won the Arts and Letters competition and was published in the Newfoundland Quarterly, Summer 2020. His reading from The Sign on My Father’s House was featured on CBC Radio’s Canada Presents. His weekly readings from his works continue to attract thousands of viewers.

Tom Moore's profile page