Synopsis

Shoal Hope is a novel set in Provincetown just before the First World War. It is woven from three stories that lead us into life there and then.

Stevie is a boy impatient to grow up, working in the local fisheries at a time when they too were undergoing dramatic changes. Albert is an art student at a crossroads, struggling with the responsibilities life, and his devotion to painting, have put in his path. Antone is a Portuguese immigrant fisherman. We follow him from his origins on the Azorean island of Pico to his last days, a broken man unable to handle all that life has dealt him.

We are immersed in a fragile beauty; surrounded by a bounty of marine life now in severe decline. We are swept up in the poetry of this place and exposed to ways of life that have all but disappeared from public awareness.

Shoal Hope explores themes of transition; from human-powered craft under sail to internal combustion; from a world of abundance to one of increasing scarcity. We witness what it was like growing from boyhood to youth, and youth to manhood. What it meant to become an artist, and how these lives were shaped by their unique environment.  We discover what it meant to inhabit a Shoal Hope, the first name given to this strip of land we know as Cape Cod.

Shoal Hope is Antonio Dias’ first novel. He grew up in Truro and Provincetown during the final days of the local fisheries. Living there, and in other coastal New England towns over the years, has given him access to the currents flowing through Shoal Hope. His experience as a painter, boatbuilder, designer, sailor and as a student of history inflect his writing.

Antonio’s second novel is Something for Nothing. It is also set in Provincetown. We follow some of Shoal Hope’s characters beyond the convulsions of the Great War. We see Prohibition’s effects along these shores. The story culminates with the accidental sinking of a U. S. Navy submarine by a Coast Guard destroyer fighting the early stages of our “war on everything.”  The attempted rescue of sailors trapped on the stricken sub, and the effect this tragedy had on the community, are portrayed within a gripping mosaic of a country on the verge of the Great Depression and World War II.

Antonio and his wife, the photographer Katherine Mehls, live in Narragansett, Rhode Island with their Portuguese Podengo, Delfina.