#20 Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

# 20 Crow Lake by Mary Lawson

My dear reader,

Because it is the month of Canada’s 150^th birthday, I give to you another book by a Canadian author who is a distant relative of L. M. Montgomery, author of Anne of Green Gables. 

I was given Crow Lake by an English teacher friend some years ago and sadly, never read it. I’m not sure why. Perhaps at the time I wasn’t in the right frame of mind, maybe I was too busy or just not keen on the subject matter.  Lord only knows why I didn’t read it and quite frankly, it doesn’t matter.  What matters is that this book somehow missed my give-away box and I can now highly recommend it to you!

This book takes place in the harsh environment of the Canadian Shield and follows the Morrison family through a devastating loss.  We meet the family through the voice of Kate, the third of four children born and raised in a small community 400 miles north of Toronto, truly in the middle of nowhere.  Raised by loving parents, the children’s paths are forever altered when the parents are killed and the eldest son decides to raise his siblings himself.  When told through the innocent eyes of a child, the story is touching and tender but as Kate matures and her world view is altered, her notions of family, life and love become skewed and she abandons her siblings and the place she once called home.  When she returns home for a family celebration with her boyfriend, her memories and lost years begin to haunt her and she is forced to deal with the estrangement that has grown between her and her siblings, especially her brother Matt whom she idolized as a child and whose relationship has withered since she left home for the big city many years before.

I enjoyed this book not only for the view it gave into a different time but also the view of a place in our country that is so harsh and unforgiving that the challenges people living in that environment would have to deal with seem completely foreign in our modern times.  The author’s use of language is descriptive yet compelling and she supplies the characters’ with lives and emotions that are entirely believable. 

If you are searching for a distinctly Canadian novel, I would highly recommend Mary Lawson’s Crow Lake.  Until next time…have you read a Canadian book today?

Julie