By the Good Sainte Anne: A Story of Modern Quebec

Nancy Howard did not ask to be buried in rural Quebec while her father pursued his historical researches. Back in Connecticut, the Leightons' dinner party looms large - her entire social life proceeding without her, documented in letters that arrive like taunts from a world she can almost taste. Her father, it seems, has chosen medieval documents over his daughter's debut season, and Nancy finds herself exiled to the picturesque wilderness of Beaupré, where the language is strange, the customs are foreign, and there is absolutely nothing worth wearing a new dress to. Yet as the weeks pass, this sharp-tongued American girl begins to see the region through different eyes - its rugged beauty, its hardy people, the peculiar dignity of a place that has forgotten nothing of its past. By turns satirical and surprisingly warm, the novel captures the collision between a restless young woman's expectations and a world that refuses to bend to her impatience. It is a period portrait of cultural displacement, written with humor and genuine affection for both its protagonist and the foreign land she learns to call home.