Pam Clark

A good tale, engagingly written, with historical significance (it's about the immigrant Ukrainian experience in Alberta, and about the internments during WWI), but desperately in need of an editor. There were a number of logical inconsistencies: An 18-year-old Ukrainian peasant who left her village barely six weeks before is so fluent in English that she never has even the slightest difficulty understanding anyone, even those with French-Canadian accents. There's a Russian Orthodox church - where everyone sits in pews - in a community of mostly western Ukrainians, which is blessed by a Roman Catholic priest barely 20 pages later. They boarded the ship on which they crossed the Atlantic at Hamburg, after traveling by train from Ukraine to Antwerp. Etc. And that entire last 60-page segment, about the titular character seeking an apology for the whole thing – really, I felt the story would have been better without it.… (mais)