"My father has married me to a mad old man." These words, written on a slip of paper inside a fading brocade collar, are a clue to the unlikely marriage of a Jewish remittance man and a 14-year-old orphan in a remote Newfoundland fishing station. More curious still are the connections that entangle a retired schoolteacher and an Israeli scholar almost two centuries later. When the bereaved Rosehannah Quint and her mysterious "mister" retreat into winter quarters at the back of Ireland's Eye, the two begin to develop an understanding based on curiosity as well as upon need - an understanding that works its way down the years. The Winterhouse is a compelling novel about finding oneself and creating one's own community.

Robin McGrath’s poetry is alive with the rhythms of speech and storytelling. Her work sings, shouts, cries. A wry humour escapes from almost every corner of the book, whose themes of community, loss and anger never fail by moralizing or sliding into the dotage of self-helpism. Arranged in four parts, these poems travel from Newfoundland meadows and the delights of rural living, to experiences and memories of the Canadian arctic. They then move to Jerusalem and to a portrait of the Jewish faith and circle back to examine domestic life with poems on home and marriage