ABOUT
THE BOOK

Set in a farming community adjacent to St. John’s, Newfoundland, The Confessions of Nipper Mooney is a rich evocation of life in the 1950s and ’60s. Searching and sensitive, Nipper is full of questions about everything from fairy lore to the nature of the souls of trout and horses. He finds a kindred spirit in Brendan, the local mystic and loner. Nipper’s mother, feeling the need for both a solid education and male role models, sends him off to All Angels, a St. John’s school run by the Christian Brothers. Here, Nipper struggles with an education system deeply rooted in draconian discipline and steeped in the kind of Catholicism that leads him to more and more questions. In this claustrophobic and often violent world, Nipper survives by becoming a reader and dreamer, and by developing a scrappy toughness.