A young Jamaican man, Cyril, comes to Canada to obtain an education after his mother passes away, enrolling at Ryerson University in Toronto. He feels out of place and doesn't make friends easily. He meets Pat, a woman living with mental health issues who introduces him to the story of Edward, a young boy given up by his mother over 70 years ago. Cyril identifies with Edward, a young mixed race boy with an absent father. He begins to try to find out what happened to Edward, and in doing so, learns a lot about Black history in Canada.

When I heard about this book, I thought it might sacrifice the story for the teaching about Black history, but I worried needlessly. It's a good story about Cyril's search for Edward and for his own path forward. Yes, you will learn a few things, but you will also have a most entertaining read. ( )

In Sheila Murray’s vibrant, melancholy debut novel, Finding Edward, young Cyril Rowntree leaves his home in Jamaica after his mother’s death for a new life in Canada, where he enrols at Ryerson University. With a soft-spoken, reticent nature and feeling very much an outsider in his new country, Cyril does not make friends easily. A chance encounter with a street person, Patricia, whose forceful manner and charming eccentricities Cyril find hard to resist, leads him toward a mystery that becomes his passion. On display in a local church, Patricia shows Cyril a cache of photographs and documents from the 1920s depicting Edward Davina, a boy at the time the pictures were taken, whose fate is unknown. Cyril sees himself in the boy Edward and feels enough of a connection to take up the challenge of discovering what happened to him. Scant clues direct Cyril’s archival research, and despite setbacks and distractions, over the following months a picture begins to emerge of the unsettled and impoverished life Edward led, where it took him, and what he suffered. Finding Edward depicts, often in gut-wrenching terms, the iconic and difficult story of growing up black in Canada over the last century. Murray’s novel, undeniably a triumph of historical reconstruction, is deliberately paced and somewhat overlong, but it tells a compelling and necessary story of ingrained social injustice that is long past due for a reckoning. ( )