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      The dryland diaries

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      HOBSBAWN-SMITH-THESIS.pdf (98.79Kb)
      Date
      2014-10-09
      Author
      Hobsbawn-Smith, dee
      Type
      Thesis
      Degree Level
      Masters
      Metadata
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      Abstract
      The Dryland Diaries is a multigenerational narrative in the epistolary style, a tale of four women, central character Luka; her mother Lenore; grandmother Charlotte; and great-grandmother Annie – cast in the Quebecoise tradition of the roman du terroir, invoking place and family, the primal terroir of a storyteller. The novel is driven by three acts of violence – the possible murder of Annie’s husband, Jordan, by her Hutterite father; the rape of Charlotte; and the probable murder of Lenore by a notorious serial killer. Set in rural Saskatchewan and Vancouver, Luka, a single mother, finds Annie’s and Charlotte’s journals in the basement of her farm home, where both her predecessors also lived. She reads their stories while attempting to come to terms with her search for her missing mother, and with her attraction to her former flame, Earl, now married. Luka learns that Jordan disappeared shortly after the Canadian government enacted conscription for farmers in the First World War, when Annie became a stud horsewoman, her daughter Charlotte born before the war ended. Letters and newspaper clippings trace the family’s life through the drought and Great Depression; then Charlotte’s diaries reveal her rape at Danceland during the Second World War. Her daughter, Lenore, grows up off-balance emotionally, and abandons her daughters. Luka returns to Vancouver and learns her mother’s fate. Told from Luka’s point of view, in first-person narrative with intercutting diary excerpts and third-person narratives, the novel examines how violence percolates through generations. It also examines how mothers influence their children, the role of art, how the natural world influences a life, and questions our definition of “home.” At its heart, the novel is a story about what makes a family a family, about choices we make toward happiness, and about how violence perpetuates itself through the generations. Inspired by Margaret Lawrence’s The Stone Angel, Carol Shields’ The Stone Diaries, and the place-particular writing of Annie Proulx and Guy Vanderhaeghe, The Dryland Diaries paints a family portrait of loss, hope and redemption, locating it on the boundaries of historical fiction, firmly within the realm of epistolary and intergenerational narrative.
      Degree
      Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.)
      Department
      Interdisciplinary Centre for Culture and Creativity
      Program
      Writing
      Supervisor
      Lynes, Jeanette
      Committee
      Wall, Kathleen; Lovrod, Marie; Muri, Allison
      Copyright Date
      September 2014
      URI
      http://hdl.handle.net/10388/ETD-2014-09-1704
      Subject
      epistolary novel
      intergenerational novel
      prairie
      roman du terroir
      historical fiction
      family violence
      flood
      Canadian fiction
      multi-generational novel
      missing women
      Danceland
      rape
      Hutterites
      Ukrainian internment
      Downtown Eastside
      The Only
      conscientious objector
      First World War
      Second World War
      WWI
      WWII
      horses
      farm accidents
      Temperance Street
      Saskatoon
      Vancouver
      rodeo
      murder
      dee Hobsbawn-Smith.
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      • Graduate Theses and Dissertations
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