Melissa Hardy has been writing for a long time - her first novel appeared in 1970 - and sets her stories in the far reaches of Ontario. One thinks, after reading her masterful story The Heifer, that she might be Canada's other, unknown Alice Munro, a talented spinner of tales working with quiet isolation, churning out wondrous stories that only rarely reach the US audience. But a Google search reveals little about her. She's published a few novels, a few collections of short stories, and her personal website contains a heartfelt plea that she has another novel in progress looking for a home. In other words, she's a good writer struggling to make a go of it.
That being said, this is a wonderful story. It's an account of Aina, a Finnish woman, and her disastrous emigration to northern Ontario during a 19th century gold rush. She's seduced by the idea of going to America to be with her new husband, and forging a life in the unknown. The heifer of the title is a wedding present from her husband. He's moody and shiftless, and too meek to collect the heifer from an unreliable neighbor, and it's up to Aina to demand collection and then, in the dead of winter, lead the heifer across a frozen river despite everyone's mirthful conviction that cows won't cross glaze ice. After that, she begins to hate everything about Ontario - its harsh winter, her shiftless husband, the infertile land, and begins to plot her escape. What follows is a rush of disaster and tragedy.
The Heifer can be found in Best American Short Stories, 2002.
2 comments:
Thank you so much for that lovely review. I have had quite a hard time getting my work out and it's wonderful to hear something nice in the center of so much silence.
Melissa Hardy
When travelling in Israel a couple months ago, I learned that Alice Munro had just won a Pulitzer Prize. Having never read her, I picked up her latest short story collection in an English language book store. Around the third story, I said to myself "I HAVE read this author. I think she was the one who wrote that fantastic story, 'The Heiffer.'
A Google search, and your website, proved me wrong. But I was delighted to become aware of the author whose fierce, moving, and masterful work has stayed in my mind all these years.
i hope the frustrating publishing situation she writes about in 2010 has turned around and that she is gaining the recognition her talent deserves. Now that I know her name, I'll go looking for her.
Suellen Mayfield--Venice, CA
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