Meanwhile, Rupert and Melvin, the elder a family man with a solid business career, the younger still leading a feckless and unsettled life, discover how much they have in common despite how far apart their paths seem to have strayed. Melvin played a part in the troubled story of Rupert's marriage and entry into the world of international business. Rupert stood behind his brother when Melvin's wayward life reached its dangerous nadir. And now, in their different ways, they try to support each other and their mother in this time of radical need.
Edith Field's final response to the family crisis is not entirely what might have been predicted. She seems to have survived as well as or even better than the others. At summer's end, we see her transforming herself, revisiting her family history bravely to see the past, present, and future as beautiful.
More fiction by F.W. Watt
Heads or Tails 23 Stories
After the Funeral
Loving Daughters
The Road to Sutton
The Youth Drug
The Lannigan Set-Up
Joking Matters
F.W. Watt studied at the University of British Columbia, Oxford (as a Rhodes Scholar), and at the U. of Toronto, where he stayed as a professor in the English Department for 33 years. In the later stages of his career he dived into town and country life north of Toronto and became a commuter. Here were people in many ways different from those he knew in the ivory tower. He could see into their complicated and varied lives from close up as never before. And he was challenged to look more deeply into the ocean of his own intimate experiences, and those of many others he encountered daily. He felt driven to try to see below the surfaces. It became a compulsion to explore his visions in words and stories. He was not writing for others, but to satisfy his own need to be able to go back and relive moments of life which made him laugh and cry, and to try to understand them. Some of his visions he captured and published in poetry, others in short stories. The remaining mass of fiction, stories and novels, sat waiting during the quarter century of his retirement. Now, at 87 years, beyond the hopes and fears of young writers, but still wanting the fruits of sharing, he takes the ultimate test, the encounter with the minds and hearts of other readers. Go, little book. Seven of 8.