Latitudes of Melt by Joan Clark.✔✔✔✔

I enjoyed An Audience of Chairs by Joan Clark so much that when I found this earlier novel in a used bookstore, I snatched it up right away. Knowing it was about Newfoundland was another irresistible factor!

And, of course, I wasn't disappointed at all - this is an epic story of a Newfoundland family living on the Southern Shore. It begins in 1912 with a baby found floating on an ice pan by two fishermen - this child is named Aurora because she was found at dawn, and becomes part of the St. Croix family in a small outpost called Drook. Aurora, who is known as a "fairy child" not only because of her being found as she was, but also because she is a free spirit, becomes the central figure in the novel - the first two parts of the novel concentrate on her life as a child, young woman, mother, and grandmother, then the third traces her real parents' lives up till that moment when the Titanic sinks and Aurora is set afloat by her mother, who dies shortly after at the scene of the sinking. The fourth, and final part relates how this information was uncovered and show Aurora making connections with her past.

The title refers to the latitudinal points of Newfoundland - those points where the icebergs coming down the Labrador currents eventually grind up in the coves and bays of Newfoundland. Ice and sea water are very much a part of this novel - Aurora was found on it, her childhood friend dies from a rogue wave, her son Stan becomes an ice engineer and at the end of the novel is inspecting the wreckage of the Titanic, Stan's wife Anna dies on a diving expedition - but I was also struck by the significance of "melting" in the novel - how so many lives, so many characters, appeared in the novel, then either died or disappeared, and how Aurora herself maintained that freedom of spirit, that unique streak which makes her appear as if she doesn't entirely walk upon the earth like the rest of us. It was very well done!