Novel
The Man from Glengarry
Ralph Connor · 1901
Opening lines
The winter had broken early and the Scotch River was running ice-free and full from bank to bank.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
Glengarry County, in the Ottawa Valley, in the days of the great lumber camps. Ranald Macdonald grows up among the Scottish settlers, between the forest, the river-driving of timber and the little Presbyterian church. In a tavern brawl, Louis LeNoir, foreman of a rival camp, leaves his father crippled, and the boy swears to avenge him. Mrs Murray, the minister's wife, who has taken a liking to him, tries to turn him away from this blood debt and to give him another idea of strength.
Context
The author wrote to plead the cause of the western missions: a first chronicle published in 1897 in the Presbyterian magazine The Westminster was so successful that its editor asked for a sequel, and the collected episodes made a first novel in 1898. This one is the third, and in it the author leaves the western mountains for the country of his childhood and the trades he had seen there. The character of Mrs Murray is inspired by his mother. A silent adaptation was made from it in 1922.
Who it is for
A coming-of-age novel with no difficulty in reading, whose religious morality is constant. The dialogues carry the Scottish accent of the settlers and the Frenchified English of a foreman.
Prizes and reception
Its author was one of the most widely read Canadian novelists of his time: before 1914, each of his nine novels had sold more than a hundred thousand copies.
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