While working on a study of literature set in the Thompson Nicola Regional District, I came across an engaging novel about life at Walhachin during the First World War.
Written by Irish author James Ferron Anderson, The River and the Sea (2012) is a lyrical and historical portrait of an agricultural dream that ultimately failed.
The story begins in Kamloops in the spring of 1918 with a meeting between Irishman Jack Butler and Englishwoman Sarah Underhill.
When Sarah discovers that Jack, a bit of a dubious character, once did orcharding work in the Okanagan, she invites him to come manage her own fruit farm, which she is desperately trying to keep going while her husband Edward is away fighting in the trenches.
When Jack and Sarah arrive in Footner (the fictionalized Walhachin), signs of the neglect wrought on the orcharding community at a time when patriotism was high are made painfully evident.
Also evident is the futility of establishing a very British new Eden in such a semi-arid landscape.
Footner is on its last gasp and Jack’s scorn for the English people who succumbed to the settlement propaganda that brought them there is apparent.
Sarah, however, continues to dream of a future for her town, “once the war is over and the men are back.”
Jack is given the task of maintaining the irrigation system and managing the Chinese workers who provide much of the labour for the community.
Five months later and Jack, who had expressed the intention to travel further west, realizes he has begun to feel at home in this new place.
He has also fallen in love with Sarah. Their passion grows as they share the work of the farm and walks along the benchlands of the South Thompson River.
They begin their affair in mid-September, just two months before the end of the war.
When the characters learn about the war’s end on Nov. 11, 1918, things do not immediately return to normal. Sarah’s husband has been injured and is recuperating in England.
Winter passes and the story is taken up again in the spring of 1919.
Some men will never return and, of those who do, some are too injured to do the work of orcharding, some simply take their families and move elsewhere to start life again elsewhere.
When Sarah finally receives news of her husband’s return, she breaks off the romance with Jack. He, however, chooses to stay on in the small community and hopes for a change in his feelings toward Sarah and, hence, a reason to leave Footner behind.
When he attends a dinner party at the Underhill home and meets a cousin of Edward’s, Mr. Harry Garrard, a man who is known for his explorations and idealizations of the Canadian North, their collective fortunes change.
Harry sets out a plan for the three men to spend a winter trapping foxes in the North, an attractive offer that supposedly would allow Edward to earn enough money to make the Underhill farm and Footner successful.
Jack’s participation in the scheme is an act of jealous revenge against Sarah, who does not want her injured husband to go, and against Edward, who is too weak, physically and psychologically, to endure such an adventure.
The novel actually begins when all of these events are now past and Harry, Edward and Jack are already in a sparse cabin on the banks of the Thelon River in the Northwest Territories.
The men are slowly starving and are once again subject to a dream that has failed.
As they desperately hold onto the hope of a return to Footner and to Sarah, Edward and Jack confront not only the stark reality of the Canadian landscape, but also their respective pasts and terrible psychological changes that have been wrought as a result of the war.
Each chapter of Anderson’s novel intersperses these present moments up north with the story of Sarah and Jack’s relationship in Footner, and they culminate in a final chapter in which we learn the fate of those two characters.
Or — so we think.
In the end, the author weaves us a mystery, which can be solved by paying close attention to details.
Speaking of details, what attracts me most about this book are the author’s abundant localized references (such as Kamloops Lake, the Inland Sentinel newspaper, various small towns and historical figures) and the sensuous descriptions of the regional landscape, including the South Thompson River (which becomes a central character in the novel), the bunchgrass and sagebrush, the dry heat and the various sounds with which readers from this place will be more than passingly familiar.
The author’s passion for this place, which he visits regularly, is palpable in every page.
S. Leigh Matthews teaches Canadian, women’s and children’s literature. She is working on a study of literature set in the Thompson-Nicola Regional District.
The post TRU Book Review: Author’s passion for area ‘palpable in every page’ appeared first on Kamloops This Week.