The Sign on My Father's House

By Tom Moore

"Felix, you are a dreamer. I used to be, too, but there’s no payoff in it.”

Felix Ryan, from Curlew, Conception Bay, has been in love with the enigmatic Ellen Monteau ever since the day he met her in school at Smallwood High. Friends and family try to warn him that she is nothing but trouble, but she is Helen of Troy and he longs to be her King Menelaus . . . or Prince Paris. Meanwhile, trouble is brewing at home, as Felix’s father erects an enormous sign on his house condemning Premier Joey Smallwood—much to the chagrin of his family and their Liberal neighbours in the early days after Confederation.

This is the uproariously funny and at times heartbreaking tale of a young man's rough ride into adulthood. Felix Ryan is on a journey to discover who he is and where he is headed. He moves from rural Newfoundland to the hectic life of Memorial University in the late 1960s. It is a world of music, girls, and new experiences. Felix's world is changing as the Joey Smallwood era comes to an end. But Ellen Monteau never strays far from his mind. Ultimately, he must choose between continuing his education on the mainland of Canada, or putting down roots at home in Newfoundland.

The Sign on My Father’s House marks Tom Moore’s triumphant and long-anticipated return to literary fiction. It is a story about finding your voice and putting up your own sign about who you are and what you believe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Flanker Press
• Release date: May 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9781771177443

Tom Moore

Tom Moore is an award-winning writer in St. John’s, Newfoundland. His first novel, Good-Bye Momma, became a Canadian bestseller and won a “Children’s Choice” award from the Children’s Book Centre in Toronto. It was translated into Danish in 1982 and into Romanian in 1979. The CBC produced a radio play version, and The Canadian Book of Lists named it one of the best children’s books in Canada. In 1994, Angels Crying became his second national bestseller. It was required reading at schools of social work, including Memorial University, Dalhousie University, College of the North Atlantic, and the University of Maine at Presque Isle. It was translated into Chinese in 2002. In 2000, Ghost World won the inaugural Percy Janes award for best novel manuscript. “The Summer My Mother Died,” a short story, was a winning entry in Canadian Storyteller, Toronto, in the summer of 2004. He also published The Black Heart, a collection of poetry, and Wilfred Grenfell, a children’s biography. Tom’s poems “Ancestors,” “Songs,” and “Caplin Scull” were broadcast as operatic song settings on CBC Radio by Lynn Channing, Music Department University of Calgary, and “Songs” by Peter Mannion and the Galway University Choir in Ireland. In 1997, “Ancestors” was read for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on her visit to Bonavista. His novel The Sign on My Father’s House won the NL Reads 2020 competition, the Margaret Duley Fiction Award, and the NL Public Libraries called it “the must-read book for 2020.” Moore is the only writer to win both the Percy Janes award and the Margaret Duley award for fiction. His short story “Pegasus” won the Arts and Letters competition and was published in the Newfoundland Quarterly, Summer 2020. His reading from The Sign on My Father’s House was featured on CBC Radio’s Canada Presents. His weekly readings from his works continue to attract thousands of viewers.

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