The Divine Ryans

For nine-year-old Draper Doyle Ryan, life in St. John's is equal parts humour and heartbreak. He struggles with the mysterious death of his father, his budding adolescence, and the demands of his eccentric family.
The Ryans are devout Catholics; Draper is a die-hard Habs fan. Hockey is his passion, Saturday night his church service, Foster Hewitt his priest. When the Habs play the Leafs, his whole family gathers, turning what was never merely a game into an epic battle between the "true church" and the Protestants.

Wayne Johnston was born in Goulds, Newfoundland. He has written five novels, of which The Navigator of New York (2002) is the latest. His previous novel, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (1998), was nominated for the most prestigious fiction awards in Canada; it won the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize and the Canadian Authors' Association Award for Fiction. His memoir, Baltimore's Mansion (1999), was awarded the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-Fiction.