Fiction (General, Literary, Women's, Historical)
Date Published: 07-21-2022
Publisher: Mountain Lake Press
Life is winding down for French Canadian immigrant Rose Dowd. She isn’t fighting the flow until Fate forces her to gear up for yet another chapter. Much like her adopted country, as it stakes out a new international role in World War II, Rose must reinvent herself. Quickly. Before she can move forward, however, she needs to absorb lessons from her past, by channeling her former persona as the spunky Quarryman’s girl, by reexamining her culture shock and parental abandonment, and by mending a long-standing rift with her sister Isabelle.
Integral to Rose’s journey are her sharp-tongued sister Izzy; her perpetually worried son Vince, a resourceful shipyard worker; her long dead Métis mentor Mère Agathe; her bright and bubbly, but sickly granddaughter Netty; and Nate, “The Ragman’s Grandson,” a club-footed, pre-law student dreading his future. Follow these unforgettable characters from the 1880s to the 1940s, Travel from the hard-scrabble pig farms of Quebec to the granite quarries of Quincy (Massachusetts); from the frozen St. Lawrence River to the deep-channel Fore River, launching pad for some of World War II’s most famous warships.
What a loser you are,
Kagan, Nate thought, after turning around for the hundredth time on Rose’s
cramped sofa. The large crucifix dominating the opposite wall made him uneasy,
even though it was barely visible in the gloom. And the anodyne effects of his
post-prandial toddy had long since worn off. His sins awoke him at two o’clock.
There was
the sin of his physical disability. Three
lousy miles to my own bed and it might as well be thirty. He needed some
driver to come to his rescue, but none was available. The side roads had yet to
be plowed, keeping all but the most daring at home. That included his father
and grandfather. Vince had been called in for another shift at the shipyard, to
handle all the problems caused by the foul weather. So there was no rescue from
him, either.
There was
the sin of being twenty-one and still a virgin. He had hopes for Betty, a classmate who was no looker but had a
lively sense of humor and didn’t seem to mind his limp. They had been to two
movies and dinner. She seemed to have fun every time. But lately she was acting
standoffish, probably because she wearied of taking the smelly subway
everywhere. Nate’s MG was currently buried under the snow in Vince’s driveway,
where it awaited additional scrounged parts.
There was
the sin of general loneliness. Nate had a study buddy, with whom he shared the
occasional beer. Nate hung out with Ben—who had acne, thinning hair, a weight
problem, and a slight stutter—mainly to be kind. Ben hung out with him because
kindness was something rarely experienced from contemporaries. It wasn’t much
of a friendship. Lying on that narrow sofa, Nate was depressed to conclude that
Vince Dowd probably qualified as his closest friend, a middle-aged husband and
father with precious little time or energy for the kind of socializing
twenty-one year-olds were supposed to crave.
There was
the sin of not really craving most of the socializing Nate’s more popular
classmates enjoyed.
There was
the sin of being genuinely interested in the lives of the two old ladies
upstairs. What was wrong with him? How many other young men would actually
enjoy chatting with dotty Rose or bantering with the acerbic Izzy? Nate hoped
he didn’t have some oedipal fixation. He suspected his enjoyment of Rose and
Izzy traced back to the writer in him. That inner novelist also eavesdropped
happily on restaurant conversations, to absorb how strangers from different
walks of life spoke. He was fascinated by their different vocabulary choices,
even their grammatical errors and speech cadence.
There was
the sin of acting like a complete moron earlier today. First, he had been way
too pushy with Izzy. Of course, the tension between her and her sister was
utterly irrelevant to his history thesis. But it piqued his writer’s curiosity.
He had made her uncomfortable and angry. And then he overdid the effort to make
nice, cooking up his stupid fried egg sandwiches for everyone, talking too
much, and generally acting like a dancing bear. Even Rose and Netty stared at
him as if antennae were twirling from his temples.
There was
the sin of making no progress toward his new goal of skipping out on law school
and finding some kind of work reporting on the war. He had made some half-assed
inquiries among classmates pursuing degrees in journalism—half-assed because
everything hinged on his finding the courage to tell his parents law school was
not for him. While making little progress toward launching a journalistic
career, he had covered his bases by applying to Harvard and Boston University
Law School. He figured Harvard would reject him. Maybe he’d get lucky and B.U.
would as well.
“Oy,” he
moaned at the dark ceiling. At this utterance, something stirred nearby. His
nearsighted eyes scanned the living room. Perhaps the dog had sauntered
downstairs? He reached behind his head for the side table, where he had folded
his glasses. As his hand groped around the table, it bumped into an unfamiliar
object, soft and warm and feeling a lot like skin. Whipping around, Nate could
just make out a large shape, occupying the chair on the other side of the end
table. “What the…?”
“Shh, mon cher,” the shape whispered. “Go back
to sleep. That diphtheria, it’s no match for my strong boy.” Rose moved her
hand from the teacup on the end table to Nate’s forehead. “See? Fever almost
all gone. My Vincent’s a strong one, him. You sleep now and you be tiguidou come morning. You betcha.”
Nate lay
back, unsure whether he should turn on the nearby lamp, unsure whether he wanted to see the tableau now playing
out in the darkness. He willed his pulse rate to slow. At her dottiest, Rose
posed no threat, he reminded himself. His heart was almost back to normal
rhythm when a barely audible lullaby wafted from the shadow beside him.
Shivering, he strained to make out the French words. He thought he caught the
refrain. Fais do do? He translated
the first word as the imperative for “do” or “make” but had no idea what the
singer wanted done or made. As he struggled to recall some French
colloquialisms, his focus shattered as the apparent lullaby came to an abrupt
halt when Rose began sobbing softly, “Oh, Maryellen, ma petite! My poor, lost bébé!”
About the Author
Melanie Forde grew up hearing fanciful tales about her voyageur forefathers swaggering through 17th century Quebec, while her Métis foremothers parsed the mysteries of the natural world. It was only a matter of time before she mined those memories for a novel. It was high time that she set her characters in the gritty hometown that started her own journey: Quincy, Massachusetts. She’d like to think she inherited some of the earlier generations’ resilience, joie de vivre and attunement with Mother Nature. She credits both her French Canadian and Irish ancestors with the storytelling gene that inspired four previous, character-driven novels. Although she now lives in the Virginia mountains, far from both Quebec and Quincy, she sometimes hears ghostly sled dogs howling softly amid the moonshadows that dapple the snow.
Also by Melanie Forde:
• Hillwilla
• On the Hillwilla Road
• Reinventing Hillwilla
• Decanted Truths
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