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Rosie Kelvey is a spirited and willful prairie woman of the early twentieth century whose ache to pursue her own desires goes against the harsh and limiting moral landscape of her time. She has what the neighbours teasingly call "two men on her hook," an older, passive husband and a virile, young lover. But life is perilous for those who are poor and female and, undeterred by the misfortunes that befall her wayward sisters, Rosie is inexorably drawn to an all-consuming flame.
Through Rosie's eyes and in her fresh, lusty voice, Fisher Lavell explores themes of poverty, loss, and upheaval. Based closely on the hardscrabble lives of the author's errant aunties, A Seven Year Ache paints their tragedies, heartaches, and passions on a large and vibrant Prairie canvas.
My momma ain't no girlie-woman. My big brother Kenny says that back east in Ontario, even before we come out here to the homestead, Momma was already famous for the two things. Number one, for being a white woman that married my poppa, my real daddy, who was not white, strictly speaking. And number two, for being the woman that took the bull by the horns. That's kind of a saying folks use sometimes, I know, taking the bull by the horns. But I'm saying it exact. Momma honestly did take a real bull by its horns and make it heed. This was back when Kenny was but a little gaffer and Momma and Poppa was working labour for some farmer. Momma herself was just a young girl back then. A slip of a girl, Kenny says. Anyways, that day Momma was working with the women up in the yard and my poppa was down in the corral with the men, mending post.
READ MOREThey'd blocked the bull safe back in the chute, but somehow, he got out and come tearing into the corral, surprised the men, and drove my poppa face down right into the dirt. Had him pinned there, gouging and stomping at him. The men was all yelling and heaving rocks, darting in front of him, whacking his backside with buckets and boards. That bull did not care. Puny things the men were to him. He was a mad careening bull. Over three thousand pounds. Poppa was a goner, weren't nothing nobody could do about it. But she came, my momma, peeling down from the house, howling like a hurricane.
COLLAPSE"In A Seven Year Ache, Fisher Lavell presents a master class on how to create captivating historical fiction. Her feisty, iconoclastic characters (Rosie Kelvey and company) lift off the pages and linger in the minds and hearts of readers long after the book is finished. She chooses historical details that resonate and still matter because they are precursors to current troubling patterns. And she weaves all of this together in a style of writing that dances across the page with energy and freshness. The sum total is a book with powerful appeal that leaves readers eagerly anticipating the next one in the Roaring River Woman series."
