"But I think I have told you a love story. Is there any other word for it? "Sense of place" doesn't seem to quite cut it for Tack's Beach and me. I hope that in my flick around Tack's Beach harbour in the 1950s, I have shed a bit of light upon where we hail from, we Newfoundlanders and Labradorians of the outports-some of us resettled, all of us clinging to every morsel of this place, Newfoundland and Labrador." Out from the Harbour is a long-awaited treat for readers young and old. It is Rex Brown's whimsical, sentimental, and at times outright funny memoir about growing up in Tack's Beach, Placentia Bay, Newfoundland and Labrador. This memoir captures with fine detail and wry wit a lifestyle of days gone by in a small outport community. Fishing, boat building, farming, shopkeeping, and a myriad of other professions in the culture of self-sufficiency, as well as the simpler delights youngsters found for entertainment in those days, are the stuff of Rex Brown's hometown recollections. Rex Brown is the organizer of the March Hare, the longest-running literary festival in Newfoundland and Labrador. This "celebration of words and music" was founded by Al Pittman, Rex Brown, and George Daniels.

Twine Loft's sayings and stories date back as far as the 1950s, when the author was growing up in Tack's Beach, Placentia Bay, in the days before resettlement. There, words spoken caught his ear, as have other colourful phrases since. Some stories highlight what life was like in them days and, also, what life became after relocation. All tellings are based upon recollections, as factual as human memory allows. The stories are vignettes of a lifetime spent amongst diverse authors and artists in Newfoundland, a place unique, where the oral tradition no longer holds sway but where storytellers linger. "Rex Brown nimbly captures the nuance and complexities of the Newfoundland character with an enviable glee that booms out across the pages of this enchanting collection. But don't be fooled by the inevitable belly laughs to come; Twine Loft is an exceptionally accomplished and essential offering." - Joel Thomas Hynes, author of We'll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night, Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction "Rex Brown's Twine Loft is full of cadence, rhythm and voice, larger-than-life characters, lightning-quick humour, and glittering insights. Here is the exacting detail capable of conjuring the past with transparent clarity. Here is the sheer, undiluted pleasure of storytelling-audience and author drawn together in the same circle, bringing to life a time when `entertainment came free and from within.' An elegant, elegiac love song to Newfoundland." - Lisa Moore, author of Something for Everyone, Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction