Gwendolyn Poole Molnar’s recollections offer us a rare look into the life of a child growing up in Pilley’s Island in the first decades of the twentieth century, before roads, electricity, and telephones connected the island community to its Newfoundland neighbours. Rich with real people and vivid scenes, redolent with roasted caplin and Nujol oil, Tapestry of Yesteryear quietly accepts the strength of past generations as a given and reminds us that all was not doom and gloom in the outports of pre-Confederation Newfoundland.