Bigamy, fraud, prison: the life of Frederick P. Grove reads like a novel. His 1925 novel Settlers of the Marsh both does, and doesn’t, hint at the unconventional choices he made in his own life.

In one sense, it feels like a quintessential early Canadian novel. It even begins with a snowstorm in the early twentieth-century in what’s now northern Manitoba. Two men are travelling on foot to a property where they’ve been hired to dig a well—young Swedish men, who expect their journey to be difficult but perhaps not SO difficult.

It seems the elements will triumph, as the men struggle and are turned away from one source of shelter en route. It seems a portent of tragedy; but, when they next sight a fire warming the indoors, they are welcomed into warmth.

Readers at that point are welcomed into a story about a small but diverse community of immigrants, working to establish themselves on the “frontier”; there is no sign of the Anishinaabe, Néhinaw, and Métis residents on their homelands, or any other Indigenous presence—we are solidly in the perspective of Niels Lindstedt, whose life revolves around other settlers like him.

If you’ve read pioneering stories before, there are many predictable elements, as they build homes and travel to and from town. But here’s where they part ways, those stories and Niels’ story—with Niels, himself.

“Well,” he said, “people here think more of their machinery than of their houses; more of their farms than of their lives. The house is merely a piece of the farm, a place to sleep in while you are not at work. I want a house of which the farm is a part, the place where what is needed in the house is grown. These people here, when they get anywhere, are rich at best. Their life has slipped by; they have never lived. Especially the women.”

About a third of the way into the novel, one has the sense that Niels is different, when this passage confirms it. What he values is different, and the highlighting of women’s experiences is also different.

This decision to express his intentions is doubly important, however; not only because it reveals essential elements of character, but because it clarifies for the reader which woman has truly captured his heart.

He expresses this desire to only one woman, but there are three prominent women in the story. There are two young women—one outgoing and one reserved—who have fathers who have settled in the area, and they are accustomed to heavy work on the farmsteads; there is one slightly older woman—a widow—who visits the area regularly enough to get acquainted with Niels, who appreciates the “finer things” in life. Readers view them all through Niels’ perspective, so our understanding of them is filtered: it’s not until he makes certain decisions, that we move to the next stage of his—their—story.

“Already, during two short months, a conviction had grown in him that there were things which all about him knew: he alone was ignorant of them…. He shrugged his shoulders: they were broad: they could carry much…”

Niels’ broad shoulders are not broad enough. His burden is first misunderstood and, then, its complexity misjudged. And this is where we remember that the first shelter on that stormy night offered no respite. Niels’ journey must unspool still farther. And because we are limited to his view, we cannot anticipate the scope of what’s ahead. It’s effective, because we only witness his gradual immersion, without true recognition of the scope of his trouble.

My previous experience of Grove’s writing is his 1922 collection of essays which highlighted his capacity to describe snowy scenes and build tension surrounding long journeys with horse—his first full-length publication in English (he was born in Prussia and published there as well, before emigrating to North America in 1909 and settling in Manitoba three years later).

There are glimpses of this experience in Niels’ story, too, but in Settlers of the Marsh, Niels “felt like a rider on horseback who tries to control his mount when it is under the influence of an uncontrollable panic”. It’s the kind of novel that, afterwards, a reader would refer to as “the one where . The kind where, in hindsight, it’s no longer possible to think of it in the same way.

And, yet, because it is rooted so firmly in character, there is no question of whether it’s plausible, only a deep sense of sorrow. Which, miraculously, Grove manages to mitigate in the end. Because the ending is quite beautiful, unexpectedly resonant.

Grove’s (1879-1948) 1946 autobiography is lauded (In Search of Myself) but I am more likely to read one of his other eight novels. Funnily enough, I had imagined they’d be staid, restrained, and—a little boring.

Thanks to Kaggsy and Simon, for hosting #1925Club, which occasioned my finally realising just how wrong I was, about Grove and his life and his stories. I’m sorry I’m late; I was ill, but because I’d written this already, I’ll share it anyhow.