I’m pleased to announce the publication of the seventh volume in the Early Canadian Literature series published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press: Christine van der Mark’s In Due Season (1947), with an afterword by Carole Gerson and Janice Dowson (Simon Fraser University).
First published in 1947, In Due Season broke new ground with its fictional representation of women and of Indigenous people. Set during the dustbowl 1930s, this prize-winning novel follows Lina Ashley, a homesteader who takes her family from southern Alberta to a new life in the Peace River region. Her daughter Poppy grows up in a community characterized by harmonious interactions between the Métis and the European settlers. Still, there is tension between mother and daughter when Poppy becomes involved with a Métis lover. This novel expands the patriarchal canon of Canadian prairie fiction by depicting the agency of a successful female settler and, as noted by Dorothy Livesay, was “one of the first, if not the first Canadian novel wherein the plight of the Native Indian and the Métis is honestly and painfully recorded.”
The afterword by Carole Gerson and Janice Dowson provides information about author van der Mark and situates her book within the contexts of Canadian social, literary, and publishing history.