Frank Parker Day, a minor novelist of the 1920s, had been forgotten for many years until his 1928 novel, Rockbound, was republished in 1973. In retrospect this sturdy tale of the harsh life of Nova Scotia fishermen must remain his memorial, for none of his other publications--including two novels, an autobiography, and a small book of lectures--has anything like its imaginative fire and strength of execution. However, it is not too much to say that the novel belongs among the few pioneering works of realism that prepared the way for the modern period of Canadian fiction.

The son of a clergyman, George Frederick Day, and Keziah Hardwick Day, the author was born on 9 May 1881 at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, and died at Yarmouth in the same province after spending much of his career in Europe and the United States. As a boy, he grew used to his family's itinerant existence in...