THE SISTERS FROM HARDSCRABBLE BAY

Published posthumously, Jenson’s debut is a rich cycle-of-life narrative about the title’s two Canadian sisters, who grow up in rural poverty and make their way in the world, remaining close despite differences in disposition and ambition. 

Della Hillock and her wilder younger sister Avis spend their early childhood on a New Brunswick farm with their father, whom they call Dad, and older brother Dalton. Although he can turn mean when he’s drinking, Dad tries to do right by his kids after the death of his wife in 1916. When the (perhaps too) appealing but troubled French Canadian girl he’s hired to care for the girls doesn’t work out, he sends them to relatives in Maine to be educated. But when he’s seriously injured in 1921, the girl must return to care for him. Della, who is the hard worker, chafes at the responsibilities she carries and feels jealous of the more carefree Avis, who drinks and carouses with Dad. Both sibling rivalry and camaraderie is expressed in small, jewel-like moments—picking blueberries, fighting over a dress. Before she’s 20, Della escapes again to the States and works as a domestic servant until she meets Eddie, who will become her husband. While focusing on her women characters, Jenson is generous with her men as well. Eddie is a painfully complex man, a devoted if resentful son of a crazy mother who grows into a devoted if adulterous husband. Meanwhile, Avis ends up in the States too but never quite settles down. She spends time in prison for borderline prostitution, drinks heavily and goes through one man after another while working as a hairdresser. But Della is no prude, and Avis has delicate sensibilities. When Dad dies in 1966, Avis and Dalton, now an alcoholic, arrive with the body just in time for the kind of family send-off their father would have loved.

Straightforward yet lyric prose and an eye for the crucial detail bring the Hillocks’ world vividly to life.