Creation - by Katherine Govier

The 2002 novel Creation - by Katherine Govier, includes a character of great importance to Prince Edward Island history. Henry Wolsey Bayfield, later Admiral Bayfield played a key role in Island life. He was also an individual who functioned on a broader stage. When John James Audubon traveled in the Gulf of St. Lawrence it was with Bayfield that he traveled and therein lies the connection to Govier's novel.

Synopsis:

Running two steps ahead of the bailiff, alternately praised and reviled, John James Audubon set himself the audacious task of drawing, from nature, every bird in North America. The result was his masterpiece, The Birds of America. In June 1833, partway through his mission, he enlisted his son, Captain Bayfield of the Royal Navy, and a party of young gentlemen to set sail for nesting grounds no ornithologist had ever seen, in the treacherous passage between Newfoundland and Labrador. Creation explores the short, stormy summer throughout which the captain became the artist's foil, measuring stick, and the recipient of his long-held secrets. It is an exploration of that fateful expedition, a probing and imaginative narrative that fills in a gap in the visionary naturalist's well-documented life.

In this atmospheric and enthralling novel, Katherine Govier tells the story of a man torn between the lies he has lived by and the truth he now needs. She recreates the summer in which "the world's greatest living bird artist" finally understood the paradox embedded in his art: that the act of creation was also an act of destruction.