I realized I had never read her Pulitzer winner, The Shipping News (1993). So this year I did. I found myself slowly pulled in by an unlikely hero, Quoyle, a gentle giant in a cruel world full of betrayal, disappointment, and heartbreak. The precocious characters multiply as Proulx’s award-winning novel progresses and her hero returns to his family’s ancestral home in Newfoundland. He finds himself in an unlikely Eden, but in time it becomes clear it is the home he has always sought. Ultimately, The Shipping News is a testament to the power of place in great writing as well as the magic of human connection to heal us; Proulx transports her readers to the bitter cold and hard living of Newfoundland where small acts of kindness and community serve as palliatives to the landscape’s harshness.