Jessica Grant wins Amazon.ca First Novel Award

Newfoundland writer Jessica Grant is this year's winner of the $7 500 Amazon.ca First Novel Award.  Her novel, Come, Thou Tortoise, beat out the nominees for this year's prize and is hailed as a "heartfelt tale". 

A delightfully offbeat story that features an opiniated tortoise and an IQ-challenged narrator who find themselves in the middle of a life-changing mystery.

Audrey Flowers is living quietly in in Oregon with Winnifred, her tortoise, when she finds out her dear father has been knocked into a coma back in Newfoundland.  Despite her fear of flying, she goes to him, but not before she reluctantly dumps Winnifred with her unreliable friends.  Poor Winnifred!

When Audrey disarms an Air Marshall en route to St. John's we begin to realize there's something, well, odd about her.  And we soon know that Audrey's quest to discover who her father really was - and reunite with Winnifred - will be an adventure like no other.

Shortlisted for the 2010 Ontario Library Association's Evergreen Award

Shortlisted for the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council 2009 Winterset Award

Vintage Canada; 432 Pages
ISBN: 978-0307397553
Amazon.com - Purchase or view here.

Other nominees include:

The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon (Roger's Trust Prize Winner)
Goya's Dog by Damian Tornapolsky
Diary of Interrupted Days by Dragan Todorovic
Daniel O'Thunder by Ian Weir
No Place Strange by Diana Fitzgerald Bryden