The Sister’s Tale by Beth Powning

“The town of Pleasant Valley is loosely based on the town of Sussex, New Brunswick.” writes Beth Powning in the afterword to her new novel The Sister’s Tale. I know Sussex well. My grandparents farm, where I spent every summer while growing up, was 10 miles outside of Sussex. In the late 1950s we lived on Paradise Row in Sussex, in a house that would have been very much like the home of  Josephine and Simeon Galloway. A great big wooden house on a street lined with huge elm trees.

As The Sister’s Tale begins, it is December 1887, the year my grandmother was born. Simeon Galloway, a sea captain, is away from home, as he often is. His wife, Josephine, and their son and two daughters, awaits his return.

The novel opens as Josephine learns from her friend, Harland Fairweather, that there is to be an auction of paupers. He begs her to take one of the girls, fearing that she will otherwise fall into the hands of a dangerous man. And, so, Flora Salford, who came to Canada as a Home Child, and has since been abandoned, becomes the charge of Mrs. Galloway.

The Sister’s Tale is the story of Flora, and her sister, Enid, who after becoming orphans in England, came to Canada expecting a better life. For so many of the Home Children that was not the case, as they were sometimes abused and mistreated.  These sisters became separated and all that Flora desires is to be re-united with her younger sister.

This is a novel about the lives of women. Women who are wives, but are really no more than chattels. It is about women working in factories and the rise of the suffrage movement. It is about women who become widowed and have few choices in their effort to provide an income for their families without a husband’s support. It is about women who are vulnerable, and are taken advantage of by unscrupulous men. It is about women who work hard to find a way to support themselves, and in doing so find they have gained not only self-respect, and self-confidence but the knowledge that they can achieve independence and face challenges with success. All of that, and a great read! I’m not giving away anything about what happens to these women, as it was such a pleasure to make that discovery as I read this excellent novel.

Congratulations, Beth Powning, once again on a very fine novel.