2023/129: A Place Called Winter — Patrick Gale

2023/129: A Place Called Winter — Patrick Gale

Venturing out into dazzling morning light, he would have thought he had woken in a kind of heaven, were it not for the lingering sense that hell was flickering just out of sight, whichever way he turned his gaze. He knew he had been in hell. [p. 3]

In the first years of the twentieth century, Harry Cane marries a pleasant woman, fathers a daughter, and enjoys a quiet, well-appointed life. He realises that he is attracted to men, and has a brief passionate affair with an elocution teacher, which ends in blackmail and rejection. His wife's family encourage him to leave the country: he buys a bottle of laudanum, but after one sip is drawn to an advertisement for emigration to Canada. A man can be granted 160 acres without any financial outlay if he cultivates a quarter of that land in three years. Harry, who has never done a day's work in his life, signs up, and tells his family that he's going to seek his fortune.

He will never see any of them again.

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