A literary romance, with a rich cast of characters, set on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls in the summer of 1889.
In her stunning debut novel, renowned Canadian novelist Jane Urquhart staked her claim as a major storyteller of her generation. It is the summer at Niagara Falls and the undertaker’s wife is busy, for this is the season of crazy stunts and frequent accidents. Across the street, in Kirk’s Hotel, Fleda McDougal lives and breathes to the sonorous rhythms of Robert Browning’s poetry. Her emotionally distant husband, Major David McDougal, is a military historian, who only comes to life when arguing that Canada, and not the United States, really won the War of 1812.
And it is in this place, beside the Niagara whirlpool, in a glade below the falls, that Fleda first encounters the chronically ill clerk and would-be poet, Patrick―the man destined to change her life.
The New York Times wrote, “A strange and sensual first novel. . . Miss Urquhart is a special writer, worth watching on both sides of Niagara Falls.” This is for any lover of Victorian-era fiction.
In her debut novel, Canadian poet Urquhart finds that the landscape and society on the Canadian side of late-19th-century Niagara Falls furnishes ample metaphor for an exploration of themes of obsession, withdrawal and the relationship of individuals to both society and nature. Bracketed by scenes of Robert Browning's last days in Venice, the story traces the interwoven lives of Patrick, a chronically ill clerk and would-be poet; blustery military historian and Americaphobe David MacDougal; his eccentric wife, Fleda, who spends her days in the woods, reading Browning's poetry; and Maude, the undertaker's widow with a mute four-year-old son. Urquhart reminds us that this era saw the end of romanticism as, against the backdrop of the river, its whirlpool and the forest, Patrick chooses to take refuge in his fantasies of Fleda rather than accept her offer of a real relationship. Fleda casts off social conventions and goes to live in the woods, at the same time that Maude, discarding the tokens of mourning, renews contact with her son, who begins in his own way to speak. Atmospheric and original, Urquhart's ambitious tale may cause readers to strain after its significance, but her accomplished prose and subtle characterization reward the effort.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
