A critically acclaimed author from this province has drawn from his own haunting family secrets for his newest novel, one that was over 30 years in the making.
Wayne Johnston, a fiction writer famous for his novels set in Newfoundland and Labrador, has released “The Mystery of Right and Wrong”, a story of a young man and the dark family secrets held by his wife’s family.
Johnston says the novel starts as a boy-meets-girl story, but quickly takes a dark turn as the main character, Wade, learns of the sexual abuse suffered by his wife at the hands of her father, something derived from Johnston’s own life.
Johnston said it was a huge shock when his brother-in-law, who he had never met, knocked on his door one night and told him of the molestation that had occurred in the family.
The published version is Johnston’s third attempt at writing the book. The first came in the 1980s, but he subsequently scrapped the previous versions out of displeasure for the tone of the piece.
He says writing the piece, especially a lengthy afterword detailing the real events of the fiction tale, provided some catharsis, but it was a journey to get to that point.
He said at first he would’ve never thought to write it, but it was his wife, Rose, that encouraged him.