Wild Youth, Volume 1.
When young Louise Mazarine arrives in the dusty frontier town of Askatoon with her much older husband, the grizzled Joel, she brings exactly the kind of trouble this repressed community has been waiting for. The townsfolk whisper behind closed doors: a girl of wild spirit, wed to a man who could be her father, trapped in a house on the prairie where the wind howls louder than her dreams. The Young Doctor watches with growing fascination, seeing in Louise not just a pretty face but a creature penned in by convention, longing for some door to open. Gilbert Parker constructs his drama with quiet intensity, letting the vast Western landscape mirror the immensity of what Louise cannot say aloud. This is a novel about the dangerous weight of suppressed desire, about what happens when vibrant youth is buried alive in respectable rural life. Volume One establishes the powder keg; one spark will be all it takes.
