LEWISTON – Award-winning Canadian novelist Donna Morrissey will speak and sign copies of her latest book, “Sylvanus Now,” at 7 p.m. Monday, April 10, in Callahan Hall at the Lewiston Public Library, 200 Lisbon St. The event is open to the public free.

“Sylvanus Now,” published this month, has already drawn acclaim as a “breathtakingly beautiful” tale of “absorbing human drama.”

Born in The Beaches, Newfoundland, Morrissey plunges her reader into a setting that she knows intimately: a small fishing community on the unforgiving Atlantic coast. In a small fishing port of 1950s Newfoundland, Morrissey’s protagonist Sylvanus is working as a fisherman when he falls in love with Adelaide, a proud and complicated young woman struggling to escape her troubled home.

Through the story of love and loss, the sea is a potent presence, modernization ravaging its shores and bringing cataclysmic change to the lives of the native folk who strive to make their living from it.

The book’s early success, as well that of Morrissey’s earlier novels, “Kit’s Law” and “Downhill Chance,” is significant in view of the fact that 10 years ago, Morrissey was working in a fish plant with no thoughts of pursuing a writing career. That was until a medical misdiagnosis – giving her nine months left to live – put her on a path that eventually led to writing.

More information is available by contacting the library at 784-0135, ext. 200.