Baltimore's Mansion

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Winner of the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction • Finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and CBC Canada Reads • From the acclaimed author of Jennie’s Boy and The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, Wayne Johnston's luminous Newfoundland memoir is a story of fathers and sons, exile and belonging, and reimagined national history—told with familial intimacy and the grandeur of myth.

Baltimore’s Mansion introduces us to the Johnstons of Ferryland, a Catholic colony founded by Lord Baltimore in the 1620s on the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland, and centres on three generations of fathers and sons whose lives trace the island’s uneasy passage from proud independence to Canadian Confederation. Filled with heart-stopping description and a cast of stubborn, acerbic, yet utterly charming family members, it is an evocation of a time and a place reminiscent of Wayne Johnston’s best fiction.

Since its debut, Baltimore’s Mansion has become a touchstone in Canadian memoir and is widely hailed as a modern classic for its beguiling combination of family history, autobiography, and national mythmaking.