Joyner’s Dream is the sweeping story of a family and its dubiouslegacy: an abiding love of music coupled with a persistentknack for thieving. Beginning in England in the 1780s,continuing in Halifax at the time of the Great Explosion, andending in Toronto in the present, eight larcenous generationsfrom all walks of life—craftsmen and highwaymen, aristocratsand servants, lawyers and B-movie actors—are connected bymusic, a secret family journal and one long-lived violin. Whenthe branches of the family are reunited and lingering secretsare revealed, we have come full circle in a hugely satisfying andsurprising tale.
This multi-generational story—told in a spellbinding seriesof historical voices—abounds in such rich social detail andsharply rendered characters, it affords the deep reading pleasuresto be found in the novels of Charles Dickens and ThomasHardy.