Written in the Ruins by Paul Chiasson has been nominated for the 2017 Dartmouth Book Award for Non-Fiction, part of the Atlantic Book Awards. The Dartmouth Book Award honours books published which have contributed the most to the enjoyment and understanding of Nova Scotia and its people.

Written in the Ruins investigates the ruins at St. Peters, in the southern part of Cape Breton Island, where amazing evidence supports a wild theory that could answer all the questions raised by the island’s curious, unresolved history: was it settled by the Chinese long before Europeans arrived?

Paul Chiasson is also the author of The Island of Seven Cities: Where the Chinese Settled When They Discovered America, a book that explores the possibility that early Chinese explorers settled in the Cape Dauphin area of Cape Breton years before Columbus made his famous voyage. He lives in Toronto.

ABOUT THE ATLANTIC BOOK AWARDS

The Atlantic Book Awards Society (ABAS) is a registered non-profit organization with the mandate “to promote and acknowledge excellence in Atlantic Canadian writing and book publishing through an annual awards ceremony and related events.”

Currently based in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the board of the Atlantic Book Awards Society is committed to being a truly regional organization with representation from all four Atlantic provinces.