Engen Books is proud to announce it has acquired the rights to Paul Butler’s 12th novel, The Governor’s Rapture.
Paul Butler is the author of eleven novels. Previous works have appeared on the judges’ lists of Canada Reads, the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Awards shortlists, and he was on the Relit Longlist for three consecutive years. Between 2003 and 2008 he won in the annual Government of Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Awards four times and was subsequently invited to be first literary representative and then chair of the Arts and Letters committee. He has written book reviews for Canada’s national newspaper of record, The Globe and Mail, articles for Canadian Geographic, and Canada’s History (formerly The Beaver). Most recently he has been an invited presenter (on the subject of The Widow’s Fire) for the Jane Austen Society of North America AGM (in 2017), and in 2021 the Children of the Night International Dracula Congress (on Mina’s Child). Also, in 2021 he was keynote presenter at the Wordbridge (southern Alberta) Conference. His website is https://paulbutlernovelist.wordpress.com/
The Governor’s Rapture deals with the events after a duel in 1778, and how they spiral down into future generations affecting the families and fates of those involved, particularly midshipman Matthew Job. Culminating in the famed Winter of the Rals of 1817-18, the coldest winter on record, it concerns themes of environmental disaster, ecological grief, and the search for meaning in nature – all of which are historically accurate and still resonate today.