Swamp Angel (1954)

Written in 1950s. A woman plans and then carries out her plan to leave her husband. Her 2nd husband, whom she married out confusion and grief. Her first was killed in the war, and her little daughter also died. She took on as her second husband a cocky brash man, a selfish man, mistaking his confident extroversion for assured comptetence. He turns out to be a self centred little mean-spirited and spiteful man. And so the book opens with Maggie carrying out her domestic chores for the final time, then sneaking away after supper. She didnt even do the dishes. I like that part the best.
That was the the best part. The tension, wondering if her husband would figure out something was up before she could escape. She ends up in a fishing lodge in the wilderness of BC interior. This part is weaker. Probably this would have been a great short story, excised from the first half of the novel. ( )

An affecting novel written in a lovely, confident, unpretentious style.

The story is a call to diligence, kindness, humility, etc., very Christian. But it's also a real adventure with a full cast, each perfectly rounded - an admirable feat in 150 paperback pages. And by "very Christian" I don't mean to disparage the novel's message. It's a brave novel that backs the Virtues so unflinchingly, and a very good novel that manages to do so without preaching or dissolving into treacle. The heroine's encounter with, and brushing-off of, a sleazy Greyhound passenger, and her plain-dealing with the pitiable, paranoiac wife of her employer, while veritable examples of a Good Woman, are also acknowledgments that good people exist in the real world, not in an ethically monochrome snowglobe.

The nature passages, descriptions of Vancouver and the B.C. interior, are very finely done. There is a rather mawkish scene with Bambi and a kitten, but it's counterbalanced by a marvelous depiction of fish-osprey-eagle competition. "Swamp Angel" is a novel that sees the balance, as well as the cruelty, in nature and applies it with a calm, Zen-like hand, to the fevers of human relations.

I'd probably have enjoyed this even more had I been a fisher. Yes, the allegory occasionally pokes through a bit! ( )

Written in 1950s. A woman plans and then carries out her plan to leave her husband. Her 2nd husband, whom she married out confusion and grief. Her first was killed in the war, and her little daughter also died. She took on as her second husband a cocky brash man, a selfish man, mistaking his confident extroversion for assured comptetence. He turns out to be a self centred little mean-spirited and spiteful man. And so the book opens with Maggie carrying out her domestic chores for the final time, then sneaking away after supper. She didnt even do the dishes. I like that part the best.That was the the best part. The tension, wondering if her husband would figure out something was up before she could escape. She ends up in a fishing lodge in the wilderness of BC interior. This part is weaker. Probably this would have been a great short story, excised from the first half of the novel. ( )