Harold Horwood's writing at its best reflects the life and history of Newfoundland which he obviously knows well and loves deeply. In journalism, essays, fiction, travel, and biography and as editor of a volume of poetry, Horwood gives his readers an insight into Newfoundland's past (by Canadian standards a very long past) and present. Works such as his 1976 travel book, Beyond the Road, or Cassie Brown's 1972 account of the heroes of the sea, Death on the Ice, written with Horwood's assistance, testify to his commitment to Atlantic Canada and its way of life. Horwood's own passionate belief in the possibility of heroism, in a number of different manifestations of the heroic, permeates his writing. As he said in a 1973 interview with Donald Cameron in Conversations with Canadian Novelists, "A person who is worth writing about needs to be an extraordinary person, someone larger than life."

Harold Andrew Horwood...