Growing up in southern Manitoba, Gander Stake learns to love the prairie, not for its vistas, but for its animal life and for the magic of the new machines that make it prosper. More agonizingly, however, he must learn how to love both his family and his grade-school sweetheart.
Set against the backdrop of World War I, this classic of prairie realism, first published in 1926, ponders whether the battle for grain is not as crucial to a nation's self-worth as the battle in Europe. ROBERT STEAD was the author of thirteen books on prairie life. In 1923, he was made the president of the Canadian Authors' Association. One
The eleventh of April, 1896, is not generally known to be a date of special significance, yet it was on that day, or, to be more exact, that night, that the hero of this narrative made his entry into a not over-hospitable world. Perhaps the term hero, with its suggestion of high enterprise, sits inappropriately upon the chief character of a somewhat commonplace tale; there was in Gander Stake little of that quality which is associated with the clash of righteous steel or the impact of noble purposes. Yet that he was without heroic fibre I will not admit, and you who bear with me through these pages shall judge whether or not the word is wholly unwarranted.
His advent in the Stake family and in the little farm settlement of which it was a unit, was not, of course, quite unexpected. Perhaps his eight-year-old brother, Jackson junior, a thin, dark-eyed, silent boy, who found himself suddenly the recipient of a night's entertainment at the neighboring farmhouse of Fraser Fyfe, was the only one in the immediate circle to be taken entirely by surprise. But, even with the added interest of the unforeseen, Jackie refused to be deeply stirred by the latest family acquisition. He regarded the little, puckered, wrinkled morsel shyly and without comment, but with an inward sense of depression which sent him presently to the fields in search of venturesome spring gophers.
To Mrs. Stake and her husband the impending event had been an occasion for serious consideration and concern. It was eight years since Jackie's arrival, but time had not entirely dulled the memory of that experience.
"You'll have a good doctor this time," Jackson had comforted his wife and himself together. "Doctor Freeman is well spoken of in the neighborhood."
Susie Stake clenched her fingers under the blankets in foreboding. "Good enough, I guess — if he gets here in time. So was Doctor Blain a good doctor, but he didn't get here... Mrs. Martin -"
Jackson's great, hard hand found hers and pressed it in a passion of inarticulate sympathy. Mrs. Martin, at the age of twenty-four, had been rewarded for her contribution to the State — the third in as many years — with a bed under six feet of frozen clay. The incident was too recent to be disregarded. Susie Stake herself had stood in the snow by that open grave, and wondered.
"It'll be spring," Jackson had argued, "an' the roads'll be open. Jackie was in January, an' a howlin' blizzard."
Gander's arrival had been under more happy circumstances. The snows of winter were gone, or nearly so, on the eleventh of April, and although the streams were full of icecold water, and a bridge on the most impassable of them had gone down with the current, trifles like these were no deterrent to Dr. Freeman. He came on horseback, swimming the streams that could not be waded, and drenched to the skin. For all his haste Gander preceded him by twenty minutes, and, before the doctor's arrival, had already sent his first lusty announcement into the world.
Dr. Freeman pronounced all well, and shared with Jackson Stake a pot of strong tea and thick slabs of bread and butter. He loitered for an hour, probably to justify the ten dollar fee which he would collect from Jackson in the fall — if the crops were good.
