DUKE, Sara Tilley's second novel, is inspired by the letters and diaries of her great-grandfather, William Marmaduke Tilly, who left Newfoundland in 1905 to try to earn enough money to get his father's business out of debt. Duke works his way across the United States, up to Vancouver, along the Yukon River and finally to Alaska, where he spends eight years in the interior toiling as a logger. When Duke returns home, his father turns inexplicably cold, locking Duke and his wife and newborn child out of the house in the dead of winter and banishing him from the community. A story of family obligation, repression and passion, ill health and ill luck, DUKE builds on the real Duke Tilly's ways of expressing himself to uncover a surprisingly contemporary fictional voice with large doses of humour, beauty and keen observation.