A SEVEN YEAR ACHE

Lavell’s series-starting novel tells of a young woman’s personal and physical struggles in rural Manitoba in the 1920s and ’30s.

This work paints a picture of a strong-willed young woman who’s set on finding her own way. Its story opens in 1920, when Rosie Workman is 10; she was born to Josephine, who was known among townsfolk “for being a white woman that married my poppa, my real daddy, who was not white, strictly speaking,” and James, a former enslaved person from the United States who later dies in battle during World War I. Rosie grows up with her mother and stepfather, Daddy Albert, and takes on homestead chores. Building a homestead life is challenging; Rosie’s older brother leaves, and two tragedies make her feel trapped by the circumstances of her life. By the age of 20, she has “four children and a old-man husband growing irksome on me.” She yearns for a man to truly love her and make her feel special, but when she finally finds support and romance, she finds she can’t abandon her family despite everything: “Many is the night I lay and ache for him. Or ache for something, some bit of sunshine in all the long, grey days.” Over the course of the novel, Lavell details the characters’ hard lives on a homestead with a feeling of gritty authenticity; for example, at one point, they’re forced to eat discarded, spoiled “jumper meat” in the absence of other options, which only makes them ill. The story also effectively shares the hardships and tragedies faced by other local residents and even addresses disturbing eugenics practices of the era through the story of Beatrice, one of Rosie’s sisters. Overall, Lavell crafts Rosie as a dynamic character who expresses desires and dreams that are contrary to norms of the time; the people that surround her also feel well developed and genuine.

An often gripping historical novel of homestead life.