Island author launches new book

Deirdre Kessler, a well-known Island author and longtime sessional instructor at UPEI, will launch a new book, Darwin’s Hornpipe, on Thursday, January 18, at 7:00 pm, at The Gallery Café, Great George Street, Charlottetown.

Kessler will do a short reading from the book, and fiddler Roy Johnstone will play a few hornpipes. All are welcome to attend.

Published by Penumbra Press, the book recounts the adventures of Will McDonough, a sailor on board the whaling barque, Morning Star. After being accused of mutiny, he does a jig on the Union Jack and is thrown overboard. He swims to an island in the Galápagos archipelago and is marooned. After his rescue, he seeks justice for Rafael, his Cofán-Ecuadorean friend who was co-accused by the barque’s captain and succumbed to a cruel flogging. A parallel narrative follows Will’s soulmate, Nixie Austin, whose missives to him depict her trek overland with a dog and companion donkeys from the California gold fields to Prince Edward Island, where she and Will eventually reunite.

Set during the American Civil War, Darwin’s Hornpipe is loosely based on Kessler's great-grandfather’s actual whaling ship experience: he too was wrongly accused of mutiny and thrown overboard near one of the islands in the Galápagos archipelago.

A resident of Charlottetown, PEI, Kessler is the author of more than two dozen books of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and has taught with the UPEI Department of English since the early 1990s. The recipient of a UPEI Hessian Award for Teaching Excellence, Kessler is also a former Poet Laureate of Prince Edward Island. The launch is organized by The Bookmark.