The Shipping News - Annie Proulx

Pulitzer prize in 1993; the main character, one Quoyle, returns to the land of his ancestors, Newfoundland (Terranova). A harsh island to live in, a soil (meaning rock) nobody would had put the foot on in the first place, wasn't it for the amount of fish. And that is changing now, we are told. Quite a lot of terrible things happen and we're driven through them in the best way possible, humorously.