Crumagrackle: A Novel
Date
2020-10-14
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
ORCID
0000-0001-5807-0528
Type
Thesis
Degree Level
Masters
Abstract
In 1905, Lenna, newly graduated from Whitehall Training College in London, England, secured her first teaching post, a class of Primary Three students. It was all she ever wanted, except that she also desired Andrew Kerrigan, her betrothed. Although tempted to defy the socio-political convention dictating that married women could not hold salaried positions, she and Andrew postponed their wedding instead. Before the first term ended, Andrew died in a freak train accident. Lenna needed her post more than ever but was fired for refusing to cane a student.
Since London held only rain and painful memories, she decided to join her brother on the Canadian Prairies. Befuddled with grief, she misjudged the amount of money needed for her trip and put most of the funds from the sale of her house into bonds and hid them behind her parents’ wedding photo. She boarded a ship with her few possessions and her cat secreted under her cloak. During a meal conversation at sea, a carpenter named Hank showed interest in her. She resisted romance because her goal of teaching became even more of a priority, and she believed her heart could never mend enough to love again. Lenna experienced increasing inner conflict between the drives of career and love and between agnosticism and faith. While she traveled to her brother’s new-found prairie homestead—further than she ever imagined—her heart made an even more formidable trip.
Description
Keywords
fiction, historical, uplit, emigration, Canada
Citation
Degree
Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.)
Department
English
Program
Writing