The list of writers coming out of Newfoundland is getting longer, very fast. Through them we get to know the island province better every time we read yet a new author's book, or the latest from an established one. Just out is The Long Run by first-time novelist Leo Furey, who previously has published only poetry and short stories. It may be a first novel, but Furey writes like a seasoned author, who knows how to shape scenes, create vivid images, and tell an absorbing tale cleanly and truthfully about life in an orphanage 44 years ago.

Oh, you may say, not another book about nuns and monks, about children treated with total disrespect by those in charge of them. Well, yes, it is, but it is a story worth reading to help us understand how things can happen that we wish did not exist. Furey, who perhaps draws on some of his own life as an orphan raised by Jesuits, gives us a tale that is sad, yet magical, despairing, yet full of hope. It is about friendship and loyalty under circumstances that seem hardly conducive to the formation of either. Yet, Furey manages to make us believe that good things can happen under bad circumstances.

The storyteller is Aiden Carmicheal, the only real orphan among a group of boys at The Mount Kildare Orphanage, who have formed a secret brotherhood, the KilDare Klub. They adopted their motto, Poculum Semi Penum: the glass half-full, from Rags, the only kind Brother in the lot of Irish Christian Brothers, who are supposed to be their caretakers.

The leader of the boys is Blackie, an American boy left at the orphanage by his mother.She had come to Newfoundland to find her boyfriend and left the boy behind. He is the only black youth in the orphanage, but the boys have great respect for him. And when Blackie decides it is time to raid the kitchen for freshly baked bread, even steal wine, everyone in the club either helps in the deed or helps to protect those who carried out the raids.

The boys have to deal with unreasonable punishment for the slightest form of disobedience, with unreasonable demands and rules. One of these newly instituted rules has to do with the use of toilet paper. Three to four pieces, five at the most, can be used. Preferably, the boys are to sit onthe toilet for five minutes to dry up before using the paper. As sad as this may appear, as unreasonable as it may be, I had to laugh when I read this. In the 1970s, a certain Canadian press baron rationed toilet paper at his  newspapers. It caused considerable frustration among the press baron's employees, and much mirth among those of us, who worked at other newspapers not owned by this gent as we listened to the complaints of our fellow journalists.

Furey has not forgotten what it meant being a boy. The language used by the club members when they talk about girls, when they discuss their teachers, is realistic. These are real boys talking.

The Long Run takes its title from the secret practice the club members carry out at night to train for the annual St. John's summer marathon. It is quite a venture, and takes place even in the coldest of winter nights. The Brothers must not know for they boys fear they will stop them from entering the run.

The boys' struggle to survive in their harsh world arouses in the reader a desire to see them win, and to see some kind of punishment meted out against the offending Brothers. But, the novel does not grant us the wish. We never learn what happens to these sorry, ridiculous, and yet dangerous men, whom one can hardly call Christian brothers. They seem to have learned nothing about the meaning of their religion, and everything about how to abuse their charges in countless ways.

We do get some satisfaction at the end when the marathon is won by Shorty Richards, whose run was really only a foil for a much longer run by Blackie. But what kind of run is best left untold for it might spoil the reading of the story.

Let it suffice that The Long Run will put the reader through quite an emotional grinder. Still, it offers moments of laughter, when one realizes that good things can happen, and do happen, even in the worst situations.