Schiffsmeldungen by Annie Proulx

After a series of personal tragedies, a downtrodden newspaperman uproots himself to his ancestral home on the stark, windswept Newfoundland coast and takes a job reporting local maritime happenings. Immersed in a tight-knit, eccentric community, he confronts painful family secrets, forges unexpected friendships and a tender relationship, and slowly rebuilds his life, discovering resilience, belonging and a dry, often darkly comic view of human endurance amid harsh landscapes.