Crossing

Dai Smith was born in the Rhondda in 1945. Hiswriting has encompassed history, biography, essaysand criticism. He was the Series Editor of the Libraryof Wales and Chair of the Arts Council Wales and wasmade a CBE for services to arts and culture in Walesin 2016. He currently edits the Modern Wales Seriesand is Chair of the Dylan Thomas Prize. With TheCrossing, Dai Smith has built upon and completed histrilogy of fictional work, Dream On, What I Know ICannot Say and What Lies Beneath.

The Crossing bridges the past and the present and connects Wales with America, as it tells of coal owners and coal workers in the age of great transatlantic liners and fortunes to be made. At its heart is a father’s search for his daughter in Welsh valleys no longer proud, where creaming off regeneration grants has replaced coal mining as a way of life and development parks now stand where once did pit head wheels. It follows a lifetime’s search for lost love, the sinking of a great ship in a great war, misplaced family and forlorn hopes where individual lives are shaped and fated in the shadow of modernity and the cold hand of progress. This brave, bold and challenging work conjures a vivid cast of characters into being and offering – with ready vim and ample vigour – their compelling, complex and ultimately telling story. “A masterpiece of amalgamation and imagination... is a fictional vision of the meaning of the life and death of American Wales”. Jon Gower“At times the writing hovers on the last edge of prose, aspiring to be poetry, and like poetry demands to be read aloud.” Wales Arts Review“In probing the meaning of Welsh lives in the twentieth century Dai Smith’s novels offer sophisticated meditations on history and community, the past and the present...” Agenda