The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay: Fiction [Hardcover]

 

 

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Idella and Avis Hillock are the sisters from Hardscrabble Bay, and this book is a collection of six vignettes from their lives from 1916 until July 1987. Hardscrabble Bay is a chilly bluff in New Brunswick, Canada: potato farms and lobster traps; isolated natural beauty and hard work.

Three of the stories stand out for me: `Gone' which opens the book with the tragedy of their mother's death in childbirth and the events immediately following; the `Holdup' which showcases Idella in her small Maine general store; and `Wake' which relates to their father's funeral some fifty years later. As Idella (Della) and Avis grow from childhood to adulthood it is clear that Idella is the more responsible and conventional of the two. Both suffer as a consequence of their mother's death, as does their brother Dalton and their father `Wild Bill'.

These are gritty stories: despair and the darker side of life are seemingly ever present, and yet Idella and Avis make their separate ways through their lives without succumbing to self-pity. There is tragedy, and also humour.

I enjoyed these stories, this sharing of life events and experiences and wondered at times about the choices each sister made. I wondered, too, how much was fiction and how much drew on family history.

`Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal' (quoted by Idella from `A Psalm of Life' by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

Beverly Jensen died in 2003: this book was published posthumously.

Jennifer Cameron-Smith

It is very sad that this author, Beverly Jensen, died in 2003 from pancreatic cancer at the age of 49 before this book was ever published. Thanks to the dedication of her writing friends and her husband, Jay Silverman, Beverly's work can now be enjoyed around the world.

From dust jacket:

"In 1916, Idella and Avis Hillock live on the edge of a chilly bluff in New Brunswick, Canada-a hardscrabble world of potato farms and lobster traps, rough men, hard work, and baffling beauty. From "Gone", the heartbreaking account of the crisis that changed their lives forever, through "Wake," a darkly comic saga of funeral plans gone awry, 'The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay chronicles their trials, adventures, loves, and losses over seven decades. The lively supporting cast includes the unforgettable "Wild Bill" Hillock; Idella's philandering husband Eddie; Avis's string of ne'er-do-well men; and a collection of locals whom Idella entertains at her small Maine General Store. Beverly Jensen has fashioned a richly textured and vivid record of a bygone era, a classic American tale of resilience and the strength of family ties."

Reason for Reading: The early 1900s time frame and the New Brunswick setting appealed to me right away.

This book was brought to publication by Beverly Jensen's family after her death in 2003. The book consists of interconnected short stories which tell the tale of two sisters who grew up in New Brunswick, poor, on a farm where their alcoholic father raised them on his own. A couple of the stories had been previously published.

From the beginning chapter (ie. story) I was taken into this book and immersed into the lives of the Hillock family, not to come back to the reality of my own family until I had finished. Even when I was not reading, I was thinking about the characters. These stories are completely character driven and the readers becomes intimately familiar with the major players. The book is divided into Parts and starts off in 1916 with the mother dying in the childbirth of the 3rd daughter, 4th child. This utterly destroys the dynamics of the family as it was the mother who connected her family together with maternal and womanly love. The father is devastated at the loss of the only one he has ever loved who has ever made him gentle, and being a hard man to begin with, eking out a living from an unforgiving land and the dangerous sea he has always taken his down time with a bottle. This leaves him incapable of raising three children, nor of being able to show them love or compassion, though it is there. This part of the book grabs your heart and makes for compelling reading. Each story is set a few years ahead of the previous one as the children grow to mid/late teens.

For the rest of the book the story concentrates on Della the oldest sister, the more responsible of the two, and continues to tell her life story up till 1987. The book mostly is told in the third person but occasionally is told from the first person point of view of individual characters. Avis, the younger sister, who has her father's love of drink and is a beauty who lives vicariously with many men, is not explored as much but she does turn up and we continue to learn of her life. The stories now are spaced further apart often going ten year jumps as we follow this family drama. The bond between the sisters is always strong even when they are not getting along with each other and the deep feeling they have for each other shows up in many ways.

I loved this book! The stories mesh together well creating an episodic story telling format and I enjoyed the occasional first hand account from a character's point of view. This is not a happy story. The girls lead hard lives. There is emotional abuse, infedelity, prison, alcoholism, drunkeness, eking out a living, yearning to *be* somebody, the decline into infirmity and death. Yet through it all there are moments of true love from places you would least expect it and there are times that these moments are bittersweet. The only thing I was bothered by was that the brother, Dalton, hardly made any appearances once they had grown and I think his character would have been interesting to watch as well. Though I suppose that can be forgiven since the title does say "Sisters".

An interesting note, as I was reading the chapter near the end entitled "Wake" I got that deja vu feeling that I had read something entirely similar to this before, in fact that I had read it before which was baffling. So I turned to the copyright page and sure enough "Wake" had been previously published in The Best American Short Stories 2007 edition which I had read that year!

I recommend the book to those who enjoy family sagas and don't mind a story told in an episodic manner.

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4.0 out of 5 stars Courtesy of Lost for Words
The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay chronicles the lives of both Idella, and Avis Hillock. The book is sectioned off into snippets, and there is a span of 4 to 5 years, or longer... Read more

Published 22 months ago by Cor Lost For Words

4.0 out of 5 stars The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay
The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay by Beverly Jensen (Rated: P throughout)
Viking Canada
ISBN: 0670021660
Published July 2010
Hardcover, 320 pages... Read more

Published 22 months ago by Sandra Olshaski

5.0 out of 5 stars A Tough Life
After reading The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay by Beverly Jensen I felt privileged to have had the opportunity to meet Idella and Avis Hillock. Read more

Published 23 months ago by S. Furlotte

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