When parents of 21-year-old Ellie ask her to break up with her dapper and ambitious beau to marry John Kurtz, the recent widower of her older sister, Ellie is outraged. She understands her parents’ need to stay connected with their little granddaughters, but at such a sacrifice on her part? It seems unthinkable! Yet, family allegiance and her ingrained training to respect and obey her parents wins. She ditches Gerhard and a little later, when John asks her to marry him and mother his two little girls, she accepts – with misgivings but a grim determination to make the marriage work.
In Not Easily Broken, a first novel by Ruth Smith Meyer, we follow Ellie from 1877 to 1900 as she makes a life with John on his Ontario farm. We experience the budding of their love and enjoy the warm atmosphere of their family. Then, just when things couldn’t be going better, Ellie is battered by another cruel circumstance. Will life ever be normal and happy again?
The characters Smith Meyer has brought to life made the book memorable for me. Sweet and thoughtful Ellie grows into a practical and wise mother and who only becomes more beautiful and vulnerable. The two main male characters, John and Jake, are very different. Smith Meyer fleshes out those differences with writerly skill by showing their personalities in conversation and action. The children Maria, Marta and George are also distinct individuals.
The book’s late 19th century rural setting is a good one for this pastoral romance. Not only is the plotline -- parents asking their daughter to marry the man of their choice though she is in love with someone else -- pretty well unthinkable in our 21st century culture, but the leisurely pace of unmechanized life is perfect for this tale of the slow nourishment of love. Smith Meyer sustains the pioneer ambiance, with its horse and buggy transportation, its farming-based economy, and its country and small-town friendliness, without lapses.
The themes of love and marriage are central. Smith Meyer shows us through Ellie and John’s lives that falling in love is much more than a floaty feeling that happens when we first lay eyes on someone special. Instead, she demonstrates how love can grow in an atmosphere of mutual empathy, unselfishness, and generosity.
Article comments
1 - Peter Black
Hello Violet:
Your review of Ruth's book gave me (I haven't read it)both an inside look and feel for its emotion and motif. Despite your point of criticism, which is gently and clearly made, I don't think it would deter me at all from purchasing or reading the book.
Peter.
2 - violet
Good. Because that was certainly not my intent!
Violet
3 - Don Dulmage
I have known Ruth since my early years. She was even my baby sitter. I watched her work with her Mom and sisters in the kitchen till she married and moved away. I never saw this side if her until I read her book. I was amazed. I quite frankly have not read better. I KNOW she rights from authority and knows the setting her story takes place in very well. Because she was always very focused on her work I did not know the writer within. I am glad I got to see that side while I am this side of the soil. I hope she writes more.