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by Dawn E. Neill (Author)
In 1972, twenty-year-old Dawn Neill followed her husband to Pushthrough, an abandoned outport on Newfoundland's
Forgotten Coast. For four years, Dawn, her husband, and young son lived as the sole inhabitants of this ghost town-no electricity, no running water, no roads, and no neighbours.
RESCUED chronicles their extraordinary survival through brutal winters, life-threatening adventures, and complete isolation. Drawing from her fifty-year-old diary entries and oral histories recorded from "Uncle Jack," an elderly lighthouse keeper who couldn't read or write, Neill weaves together her family's struggle with the vanishing voices of Newfoundland's outport communities.
This memoir captures a pivotal moment in Canadian history during the resettlement era, when hundreds of isolated communities were abandoned. RESCUED explores universal themes of motherhood under difficult conditions, the psychological toll of isolation, and the resilience required to endure when all support systems disappear.
Neill's honest, unflinching narrative preserves not only her own experience but also the memories of a disappearing way of life. Uncle Jack's stories of traditional outport culture provide historical context while highlighting the profound human connections that sustained the family through their darkest moments.
The first volume of Neill's "Journey Trilogy" From Sea to Sand to Snow-RESCUED demonstrates the extraordinary capacity of the human spirit to adapt, survive, and ultimately find meaning in the most challenging circumstances.
