Nights Below Station Street
CBC Books | Posted: February 15, 2017 6:31 PM | Last Updated: August 22, 2018
David Adams Richards
Set in a small mill town in northern New Brunswick, Nights Below Station Street draws us into the lives of a community of people who live there, including Joe Walsh, isolated and strong in the face of a drinking problem; his wife, Rita, willing to believe the best about people; and their teenage daughter Adele, whose nature is rebellious and wise, and whose love for her father wars with her desire for independence. Richards' unforgettable characters are linked together in conflict, and in articulate love and understanding. Their plight as human beings is one we share. (From Emblem Editions)
Nights Below Station Street won the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction in 1988.
From the book
It was Christmas of 1972. A spruce tree was decorated in the corner of their living room against the pine-board wall. There was a smell of evening. Their house was below Station Street and down beyond the hospital.
Adele said she never got anything. She went to bed before Midnight Mass, and then on Christmas morning got into a fight with her father and refused to open any of her presents, and instead sat on the stairs in her housecoat complaining about bad nerves and upsetting feelings.
From Nights Below Station Street by David Adams Richards ©2009. Published by Emblem Editions.