Novel
Swamp Angel
Ethel Wilson · 1954
Synopsis
Vancouver, in the early fifties. Maggie Vardoe, widow of a first husband who died in the war, has remarried Edward, a petty estate agent who humiliates her. For a year she ties fishing flies, sells them to a sporting goods shop and puts the money aside, then leaves in a taxi with no return. Via Hope and the Fraser, she reaches the interior of British Columbia and takes a job at Haldar Gunnarsen's fishing camp on Three Loon Lake. She puts him back on his feet, and Vera, Haldar's wife, conceives a fierce jealousy of her.
Context
Seven years separate this book from its author's first novel, when she was sixty-six; it appeared in 1954 from Macmillan, in Toronto and London, and from Harper in New York in a longer text, which the author preferred. The title is that of a small mother-of-pearl-handled revolver kept in Vancouver by an old friend of the heroine, Nell Severance, a former circus juggler. The 1954 reception reproached the book for its lack of plot.
Who it is for
A novel in which the lake, the forest and the work of fishing occupy a large place; recent editions give the long New York text.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as her most accomplished and best-known book, it has been reissued in paperback since 1962.
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