Summary:
Kenan Oak returns from World War I to a
small Ontario town. He is virtually unable to speak and dares not venture from
his home. Adopted by a reclusive uncle at an early age, he has no immediate
family but his wife, Tressa, who loves him and accepts his disability with good
grace. They have been trying to have a
child without success, and the glimmers of Kenan’s recovery are dauntingly few
and faint. Slowly with the help of his uncle Am, he begins to go out at night for
walks in the woods and skating on the ice of the lake.
Am and his wife Maggie have a strained
marriage. She loves to sing and once aspired to a career in music, but instead
she opted for Am and a farm—although now they live in town. Lukas, a gifted new
musician arrives to direct the choir; he is a postwar immigrant from an unnamed
European country, possibly Germany. He notices her talent and encourages her to
sing solo at the upcoming New Year’s concert. Unused to the attention, she is
captivated by him, his mystique, his appreciation of her, and the return of joy
through song. They have an affair, which is discovered by Am.
Well into the story, it emerges that Am and
Maggie had lost two children to diphtheria, and this trauma is at the heart of
their marital strife. It is why they left their farm and have grown apart. But Maggie imposed an edict of silence on this
exquisitely painful past. In contrast, Tressa slowly encourages her silent
husband to tell—by inventing stories
for him and letting him revise. His
adoptive uncle gives him a postage-stamp sized photograph of his nameless mother
and grandmother; together they construct a story.
Maggie falls pregnant with Lukas’s baby.
She goes away to have the child but Am cannot accept it. Compounding Maggie’s woe,
she stays with Am—for all their strife, they are bound in their loss. She allows
Tressa and Kenan to adopt her beloved baby.
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