The Hermit of Africville: The Life of Eddie Carvery

Jon Tattrie

Nonfiction: Biography, Nova Scotia, History, Black Culture
$19.95
208 pages
6" x 9" Trade Paperback
Includes photographs
ISBN 978-1-897426-18-0
Available in July 2010

Order this book from: Nimbus Publishing (or 1-800-Nimbus9)
or Amazon or Chapters or Pottersfield Press mail order.

Eddie Carvery was born in Africville, Nova Scotia, when the African-Nova Scotian seaside village was midway through its third century. As a teenager, he watched his world torn down as his friends and family were compelled to leave. After Africville was bulldozed in the 1960s under the guise of "urban renewal," Eddie Carvery returned to the site of his former hometown and pitched a tent in protest.

After forays into careers as a community organizer, sheet-metal worker and fisherman, Eddie returned to the ruins of Africville in 1970 to start his protest for the reclamation of his people's land and history. Forty years, three families, seven heart attacks and numerous attempts on his life later, he remains living on the land where he was born. He's been shot at, had his residence set on fire and been run off his land countless times. His struggles with his demons of addiction and violence have cost him his families and his entire adult life. He's tried to leave, but always he returned to Africville.

Sometimes accompanied by his brother, Victor, and sometimes by his friend and bodyguard, a dog called Spike, Eddie has lived as a virtual hermit in a small trailer across from the results of the urban renewal: a dog park called Seaview. All traces of his childhood community are gone, except for him - the last resident of Africville. There, through the solitude and frozen winters, he's walked the long walk to healing, rooted in the land of his ancestors. Dismissed as a squatter, he stayed in Africville. Searching through the ruins of his community and his battered mind, he's rebuilt himself and come to the conclusion that he's failed at everything, except one thing: Africville. In this riveting account, Jon Tattrie captures the story of Eddie Carvery and his struggle for survival and, ultimately, justice.

Black Snow: A Story of Love and Destruction

By Jon Tattrie

Fiction

192 pages, $19.95, 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" Paperback

ISBN-13: 978-1-897426-05-0

ISBN-10: 1-897426-05-4

Available in April 2009

Pottersfield Press || Chapters || Amazon

The ship burns in the morning sun, floating lazily in the harbour. Hundreds crowd the dockside to watch. Flaming barrels shoot into the sky and burst like fireworks to cheers. Then the big ship thumps into the pier.

Tommy Joyce looks away. Just back in Halifax from the horrors of the war in Europe, he's lost his appetite for disaster. All he wants is his wife, Evie, and peace. He's worn out from lying, from poisonous jealousy. He knows his wife was unfaithful. He knows the bruises he left on her won't heal. He knows he has to forgive. He hopes he can be forgiven.

The ship blows. Two thousand people are dead and the city is burning. Tommy staggers to his feet, his broken mind scattered between the trenches and this new terror amid the screams of the dying. Thousands dig through the ruins for signs of life as a fierce blizzard smothers the devastated city. Tommy joins the rescue effort, searching hospitals and morgues for his wife, and redemption.

Black Snow is a love story set during the Halifax Explosion. The 1917 disaster was the largest man-made blast the world had ever known, and it cut Halifax off from the rest of the world for the darkest 36 hours in its history. Rich in fact and shocking images, the story sets a blistering pace following one man's search through a ruined city for the love of his life as he confronts the wreckage of his past.

Jon Tattrie is a journalist and writer based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He freelances for the Chronicle-Herald and Metro. Over several itinerant years, he worked in a shelter for homeless men in Ireland, as a shrine-cleaner in Buddhist monasteries in England and as a vegetarian cook on the Isle of Iona. His first journalistic job was on the Edinburgh Evening News, followed by a stint on Scotland's national newspaper, The Scotsman. His first published work of fiction was an adventure mystery called Midsummer Murder, which appeared in the Halifax Daily News.