Tags

Description

While the world was still reeling from the staggering losses incurred in the First World War, a little-known Canadian sculptor was raising a colossal monument in France, where more than sixty-six thousand of his countrymen had fought and died. The Vimy Ridge Memorial still stands as a stark reminder of the Canadians who gave their lives in France - and as a testament to the vision and single-minded obsession of its now-forgotten architect, Walter Allward. It is against the backdrop of this incredible achievement that Jane Urquhart sets her new novel. At the center of the story is Klara Becker, the granddaughter of a master woodcarver, who spends her childhood in a German-settled community in southwestern Ontario in the years leading up to the Great War. It is a childhood punctuated by tremendous losses: her mother dies of cancer when she is a teenager; her older brother, in love with wandering, eventually leaves the family; and her brief but passionate love affair with Eamon O'Sullivan is cut short when he volunteers for action and never returns. But Klara's inherited gift for carving eventually reunites her with her brother and gives her purpose as she works on the memorial that will make her whole again.