First thank you to #Netgalley and ECW Press for the opportunity to listen to this book in exchange for a fair review.

I enjoyed this listen. First the narration, which is so important, was well chosen. The cadence, the depth of his voice was extremely enjoyable and appropriate for this story.

I have to think that any book set in the late 1800's has the potential for a brutal story. This is quite literally a punishing journey. Arthur Delaney makes some odd decisions early on in the book which sets the stage for the consequences later. Of course the notion that a man would raise children on his own during that time period was not considered realistic and I felt alot of sympathy for this character - almost throughout this book.

Readers should know this is at times a difficult read and not because of the writing. It is simply the world as it was.

Dear The Punishing Journey of Arthur Delaney,
Your title is an apt description. I struggled while listening to you to connect with any of the characters and at times even follow your story. There weren't enough differences between their personalities to make them distinct in my mind. While I felt for Arthur and his heartbreak in not knowing where his children were and the trials and tribulations that he went through to find them. I did learn a lot about Canada during this period in time, which I enjoyed a lot. On a whole, there wasn't a lot of your story that stayed with me and I struggled to find connections throughout.

The Punishing Journey of Arthur Delaney follows a family who is separated after their mother passes away and their father enlists in the war.
Arthur Delaney does not feel that he is fit to care for his three small children and instead enlists the help of a local orphanage to watch over them while he is at war. Unfortunately, this is the last time that all four family members are in contact with each other. Arthur has to find his way from the southern states back to the Canadian Maritime provinces. His journey spans at least a decade in which he learns about himself and the kind of father he wants to become.
His children, on the other hand, have their own journies which vary from an easy transition to essentially being sold into service.
I had a difficult time with many of the themes of this book. While well written, I would definitely look for trigger warnings before beginning.

This was a lovely book with an excellent narrator! I lost track of the story at times (my fault as I can lose focus more easily with audio). I looks forward to more from Mr. Kroll!

Thank you, ECW Press Audio and NetGalley, for a audio ARC!

Arthur promises his beloved wife on her deathbed that he will care for their three children when she dies. He is however concerned that he will not do a good job bringing them up on his own, so he is talked into handing them all over, in good faith, to an orphanage. He then decides to join the Union army. After a testing time in the army he goes back to see his children, only to be told they have been sent away. Unhappy at not being able to see them, feeling guilty and wanting to explain why he left them in the orphanage he begins a ten year journey to find them.
This moving story tells of his determination to find them and the three siblings struggles to survive as they cope with being sold and resold. I enjoyed the narration and felt it really added to the story. Thank you to the author, Net Galley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Arthur Delaney is in a difficult spot, his wife recently died, and he does not think he can raise their three children. Despite promising his wife to keep the family together, he relinquishes custody and goes off to fight in the Civil War.
The story covers a 20-year period where we learn about Arthur's children's fate, most living in awful conditions as many of the farmhand children of the period. Arthur also endures a difficult life, spending much of it in a military prison. When he is finally released, he travels on foot across Canada to find his children and to keep his wife's promise, a broken promise that he desperately wants to rectify.
The story is a sad and tragic tale but also unique with the narrative from a father's perspective.
The audio was exceptional, and the pacing was moderate. I recommend this book to those that want a different perspective on children and families in the mid-1800s.
I received the book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

It’s a promise Arthur Delaney made, he made his wife, Mary, a promise before she died to protect their children, and this book is his punishing journey!

“If we don’t blame God, then who do we blame?”

He failed to keep his promise, although I think he wanted to break it! No, I haven't stone heart but for god's sake, if you had a promise to keep children safe, why on earth should convinced that put his three young in an orphanage, think its better for them and the worst part is here, join the Union Army, for what, fight in someone else battle?!

You might think I am angry now, but my friends may know it better, I'm sad, very desperate and heartbroken for making the wrong decisions made that caused a lifetime regred.

The Punishing Journey of Arthur Delaney is about being the constant companion of guilt, the sorrowful and shaking story. In addition to the 18 years of perplexity, the tale of Arthur's children, Jimmy, Robina and Annie also are told in different timelines, which so hurting and heartache.

“It took me years to learn that blame is a hard rule to live by.”

Thanks to ECW Press via Netgalley for ARC, I have given my honest review.

Reading or listening to The Punishing Journey of Arthur Delaney will hurt your heart, but the overall experience is anything but punishing. The quiet lyricism, the sparse but harshly evocative descriptions of places, storms, and fellow travelers met on Arthur and his children's journeys, and the sad reminder that life, for huge swathes of mankind, is one endurance test after another, combine to immerse the reader into another world that one is reluctant to leave, however painful the visit. This book is not one I would normally pick up, but I am ever so grateful that it came my way. I am a slightly past middle-age female, and I loved the book, but I'm passing it to my husband who I know will probably love it even more than I did.

I am having a hard time articulating my thoughts on this one. I think the biggest issue for me is that it lacked.... depth? Based on the description, I expected sad. But I didn't get sad, per se, more depressing. I didn't feel deeply enough about the story to be sad. I could just passively think "wow, this is depressing". Hopefully that makes sense.

I will say the ending is the best part of the book. While also sad, it is satisfying.

The story is interesting. The writing is good. I just didn't emotionally connect- which you would think I would since I love historical fiction and can occasionally sob uncontrollably with a sad story.

I listened to the audiobook. The narrator was very appropriate for this story- I am assuming he is even Canadian, given how he pronounces some things. (Mid/southeastern Michigander here, so I am quite familiar with Canadian accents.)

I received an audio copy in exchange for an honest review.

“I was scared of being a father without her. Running off to war was a coward’s way out. I paid for it in that prison.”

The Punishing Journey of Arthur Delaney is the fourth novel by Canadian author, Bob Kroll. The audio version is narrated by Blair Williams. When in 1867, Arthur Delaney walks back to Halifax, Nova Scotia, after fighting in the Civil War and three years in a Confederate prison, he heads straight to Miss Golding’s Children’s Refuge and Aid Home to collect his children. After their mother died, he didn’t feel capable of looking after five-year-old Annie and eight-year-old Robina on his own.

Ten-year-old Jimmy he might have managed, but instead he’d been convinced by the abolitionist preacher to go and fight for what was right. Now, six years on, he arrives to find the orphanage empty, abandoned. Eventually he learns Miss Golding has established Hillside Farm Orphanage and Refuge Centre.

At Hillside, prim and proper Miss Emma Golding, who self-righteously quotes the Bible, “Suffer the little children to come unto me”, has told his children that he died in the war, then indentured them to work on farms or rich homes to work. Jimmy is separated from his sisters, and all are so badly treated that, after a time, they run away.

As the youngest and prettiest, Annie fares better than her siblings, but initially, not by much. All encounter unbelievable cruelty, but are also blessed with the incredible kindness of strangers. Arthur, aching for the happy family life that he sees happening around him, spends decades searching for them. He walks the length of Canada, working at whatever he can to pay his keep, sometimes fares on trains or boats, standing outside churches and on street corners in his free time, showing the only photo he has of his children.

Rather than recounting every little thing that happened to the characters, some things are merely implied. A punishing journey, it certainly is, and includes much hardship, an occasion when he and Jimmy just miss each other, a white-water canoe ride and a winter trek through rugged mountains before Arthur has learned the fate of each of his beloved children.

The depth of Kroll’s research is clear from the picture that Kroll paints of nineteenth century Canada, giving the reader an easily assimilable taste of everyday life during that time. This is a story that is reminiscent of Patrick Gale’s A Place Called Winter, and includes some tear-welling lump-in-the-throat moments. A heart-breaking tale, beautifully told.
This unbiased review is from an audio copy provided by NetGalley and ECW Press

This is a truly remarkable tale of loss and redemption, narrated to perfection. It’s the story of Arthur Delaney whose wife died leaving him with three young children. He broke a promise to his dying wife to keep the family together, left the children in a home and left Canada to fight in the Civil War. He intended to return, but events were against him and it was some years befor he was able to get back to Nova Scotland and collect his children. But the home was gone and the children dispersed. This is the story of a lifelong journey to track them down.

The narrative absolutely captures the anguish and heartbreak, often in a very understated way. It moves between Delaney and each of his three children so the reader understands the difficulty he faces in trying to find them. Along the way there’s a cast of characters all of whom give fascinating insight into life in rural Canada in the mid 1800s. Knolls research seems meticulous with details about logging and remote mining towns, working Canadians and much more. There’s a real feel for the landscape but most of all, the central characters are people whose lives have been torn apart through no fault of their own. It’s haunting, heartbreaking and lyrical. Knoll tells an incredible story and is a truly gifted writer. This rates as one of my top 10 audiobooks of all time for content and narration. I can’t rate it highly enough.

My thanks to the publisher for a review copy via Netgalley.

When Arthur Delaney loses his wife and then decides to leave his children in a Canadian children home to fight for the union in the Civil War he always thought he would go back and get them. Unfortunately when he returns the home is empty and his kids have been sold into servitude. When he returns and sees the lady is nowhere around and he has no idea where his children or he sets out to find them. This leads him on a 30 year journey where he meets interesting characters who give him sage and not so sage advice about life. While this is going on we meet his children James has been sold to a farmer and his wife had pretty much treated “OK.“ Asked for AAnnie Ian Ravena they’re sold to John Dooley an abusive jerk who has designs on Little Annie and Rodina wanting to protect her sister does exactly that. They are on the run, author is in search of them and James is growing into a great man. Just a fair warning they have sexual assault and you need Kleenex for this book. You will cry more than once. I love this book and thought the narrator whale did a awesome awesome job. He was great at character distinction and you definitely knew who was talking when they talked. I can honestly highly recommend this book if you love historical fiction at its best you will love this book! I received this book from net Gally and the author and I am leaving this review voluntarily please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review but all opinions are definitely my own.

The Punishing Journey of Arthur Delaney
by Bob Kroll, narrated by Blair Williams

The saga of Arthur Delaney and his three children is heartbreaking and covers more than two decades. After Arthur's beloved wife dies, he's left alone to raise their three young children, a boy and two girls. In his grief and devastation he fears he isn't up to the task, especially the task of raising daughters. Between talks by a woman who convinces others that her orphanage will give children the upbringing they need and abolitionist talks urging others to join the Union Army in the fight to end slavery (oh the irony), Arthur signs his children over to the orphanage and spends the next years fighting for the Union army, almost dying as a prisoner of war, and then recovering from his time as a POW. When he can, he makes the long journey back to Halifax to be reunited with his children.

Arthur has deep regrets for breaking his promise to his wife to take care of the children and keep them together. He never stopped loving his children and knows he gave up something very precious by leaving them in the hands of others. But he's going home to be the father he should have been to his children. This story is one of long journeys, suffering, and deep regret, and it seems those things will never end, not for Arthur, not for his children, and not for all the impoverished and down on their luck.

We follow not only Arthur but his three children, who were sold and resold as farm workers, some of the many children of those times and later that were nothing more than beasts of burden, to be starved and worked to death. Each of them holds onto their memories of their loving family of five, mother, father, siblings, and try to survive in any way that they can. The story is told in such a way that the times and years are a bit fuzzy, but we are aware of the miles that Arthur travels in his search for his children, one he never gives up.

The narration of the audiobook is perfect for this story. It's told in a very matter of fact way, with little embellishment to dress up the words. This is a hard story to hear but I could not put the story down until I made it to the end. Arthur's love for his late wife and his children is all that keeps him going and I had to see him through this journey.

Thank you to ECW Press Audio and NetGalley for this ARC.