Frederick Philip Grove (1879–1948)

Rounded down from 3.5

The only other book I think I've read about early settlers on the Canadian Prairie provinces was Shandi Mitchell's spectacular book Under This Unbroken Sky, so I was looking forward to additional perspectives.

This provided it - from the viewpoint of Scandinavian settlers who seem to have arrived two or three decades before the Ukrainians and therefore were more established and "civilized - ie conforming to Western culture. Their little expat community made making the homestead easier. Not a lot of plot though.… (more)

Every once in a while, one's gotta read about pioneers, right? Well I do. Perhaps it's because I discovered a few years ago, that my great grandparents would count as pioneers. Who knew? My great grandparents were pioneeers in the U.S., and here we're talking pioneers in Canada, but still pioneers on the prairies. Yes, they had prairies in Canada and they also had folks heading out west to homestead on the prairies.

In this case, we have Abe Spalding. He scouts out a part of Manitoba and eventually settles his claim on a spot of land that is vaguely higher than that around him. It seems that Manitoba has horrific floods in the spring, when the snow melts and the rivers flood. The slightly higher land drains more quickly and one can plow and plant more quickly. This is important in Manitoba, because the growing season is rather short.

Well anyway, Abe is a work-a-holic and is constantly working to improve things, to acquire more land and so forth. The less successful farmers hire themselves out to Abe so as to make enough to get by. As time goes on, the more families move in, schools are built, roads improved and so forth. So, basically, we have a story of the development of the Canadian prairies. We also have the story of Abe's success, and perhaps not-so-much success in his personal and family relationships. After all the hard work, Abe keeps coming back to the question, "what is this all for?"

A most fascinating book.
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This was quite good. It's sort of like one of those Willa Cather Prairie Trilogy books or a more adult version of Little House on the Prairie. Which is all to say it's about homesteaders/pioneers back a century and some ago. But, the difference here is we're talking about settlers in Canada, perhaps Saskatchewan or Alberta.

The protagonist is a repressed young Swede, who is very hard working. In his early time, he works like a dog for other people, saves up some money and gets himself his own farm/homestead. He works like a dog to set that up. There's a beautiful, young woman in a nearby homestead, Ellen, who can work like a man and whom Neils Lindstet finds attractive. But Ellen doesn't want to marry. She doesn't want to be someone else's property/drudge. Somehow, Neils gets entangled with Mrs. Lund, a "merry widow". Things go downhill from there. Will Neils ever get things straightened out, at least a little bit?
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