Richard Gwyn has 2 audiobooks on Listento.it, narrated by 2 narrators, with an average listener rating of 5★ across 1 ratings. The most-rated is Smallwood.
Smallwood
Summary
The extraordinary life of Joey Smallwood is the stuff of fiction literally: Wayne Johnston's acclaimed novel, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, draws heavily on this definitive biography. And no wonder! Set against a colorful background in stirring times, it has as its hero a character whose career defied both convention and the odds. A one-time pig farmer and ardent socialist turned union buster, Smallwood is best remembered as the man responsible for bringing Newfoundland into confederation with Canada. A full 10 years before Alaska and Hawaii became the forty-ninth and fiftieth states of the union, a massive British Dominion on the Eastern Seaboard was at a crossroads. Should they join the US as its forty-ninth state? Maintain ties with the British via a British-led commission of government? Should they join Canada? Joey Smallwood, a well-known radio personality, writer, and organizer at the time, led a spirited campaign in favor of joining Canada. With 52.3 percent of a controversial vote marred by sectarian tensions, Newfoundlanders voted with Smallwood, and the boundaries of Canada as we know them today were established. The first premier of Newfoundland, Smallwood ran Newfoundland virtually unchallenged for 23 years. Smallwood's work experience was checkered at best but included stints as a contributor to socialist newspapers in New York and London. He was self-taught and possessed the enthusiasm and wrongheadedness of the autodidact. As Gwyn shows, however, Smallwood possessed ambition of a rare order and utterly unconquerable self-confidence. These qualities, combined with unerring political instinct, enabled Smallwood to drag a reluctant Newfoundland into union with Canada and subsequently to impose his will over compliant colleagues and a vestigial opposition until he governed his island province with the near-absolute power of a despot. Like a despot, too, he countenanced corruption on a scale rarely equaled in Canada.
©1968, 1972, 2015 Richard Gwyn (P)2015 Audible Inc.
The Color of a Dog Running Away
Summary
Lucas, a musician and translator living in Barcelona's Gothic Quarter, comes home one day to find a cryptic invitation. When he appears at the appointed time, he sets in motion a series of bizarre, seemingly interconnected events that disrupt his previously passive existence. He meets the alluring Nuria and they begin an intense love affair. He is approached by a band of Barcelona's mythic roof dwellers and has a run-in with a fire-eating prophet. But when he and Nuria are kidnapped by a religious cult with roots stretching back to the 13th century, Lucas realizes that his life is spinning out of control. The cult's megalomaniac leader, Pontneuf, maintains that Nuria and Lucas are essential to his plan to revive the religion. While Nuria is surprisingly open to Pontneuf and his theories, Lucas is outraged and makes his escape. Back in Barcelona, Lucas wanders the streets in a drug-and-alcohol-induced haze, pining for Nuria and struggling to make sense of what has happened to him. With the alluring and enchanting Barcelona as a vibrant backdrop, The Color of a Dog Running Away is a love story, tale of adventure, and historical thriller: an unforgettable and mesmerizing novel that will beguile and disturb in equal measure.
©2005 Richard Gwyn (P)2007 Books on Tape