Cyril Rowntree migrates to Toronto from Jamaica in 2012. Managing a precarious balance of work and university he begins to navigate his way through the implications of being racialized in his challenging new land.

A chance encounter with a panhandler named Patricia leads Cyril to a suitcase full of photographs and letters dating back to the early 1920s. Cyril is drawn into the letters and their story of a white mother's struggle with the need to give up her mixed race baby, Edward. Abandoned by his own white father as a small child, Cyril's keen intuition triggers a strong connection and he begins to look for the rest of Edward's story.

As he searches, Cyril unearths fragments of Edward's itinerant life as he crisscrossed the country. Along the way, he discovers hidden pieces of Canada's Black history and gains the confidence to take on his new world. (From Cormorant Books)

Finding Edward was a finalist for the 2022 Goveror General's Literary Award for fiction and was named one of the best works of Canadian fiction in 2022 by CBC Books.

Finding Edward is on the Canada Reads 2023 longlist. The final five books and the panellists who chose them will be revealed on Jan. 25, 2023.

Sheila Murray is a writer born and raised in England who now lives in Hamilton, Ont. Finding Edward is her first novel. Her short fiction has appeared in Descant, The Dalhousie Review and The New Quarterly.

"My overall intention was for people to understand that Black people have been in Canada for a very long time. I wanted people to understand there's been a Black experience, over centuries, in Canada. Cyril discovered Edward's history and in so doing helped readers to learn about this Black history in Canada," Murray told CBC Books.

"I want to engage people with this Black experience. It's not just what we've learned since the Black Lives Matter movement, which has been so important and remains so. But before that, there were lots of other moments — and a tremendous amount of Black experiences, contributions and accomplishments."