Consolation

Consolation
Michael Redhill
Little, Brown Co.
ISBN: 0316734985
Fiction
Reviewed by Mona Lisa Safai

Consolation is beautifully written story of two families struggling with life’s complexities in two different centuries. One family, living in the mid-1800s, is trying to create a life for themselves through photography. The other, alive in the late 1990s, discovers a treasure, and links their past to the painful present of letting go of a family member through death.
David Hollis, researched the Toronto ground currently being excavated in preparation for building a new sports arena. His widow, Marianne anxiously watches the excavation from a hotel. David’s research shows that a boat sank in the excavation location in 1857. Photographs are supposed to be on that boat indicating the early city of Toronto.
Michael Redhill writes his novel toggling between two families. Jem Hallam, a new chemist has been sent from England to establish his pharmacy in Toronto. The pharmacy fails miserably. Meanwhile, he is also becoming more homesick being away from his wife and daughters. He meets Sam Ennis, a photographist, and a widow, Claudia Rowe. Together, they decide to collaborate and earn money taking photographs. The photos they leave would become valuable pieces of a treasure in a shipwreck years later.
Redhill eloquently tells a story about human beings in need of consolation, layers of relationships, and emotional connections. His intricate description of places, people, and thread of loss and love flow throughout.