Shadows on the Rock
by Willa Cather
At the end of the seventeenth century, on this "grey rock in the Canadian wilderness" known as Quebec, the French family begins a life very different from what they knew in Auclers, Paris. After the death of his mother, ten-year-old Cecil is entrusted with custody of the house and his father Euclid, the city's pharmacist. Two years later, in 1697, when the red and gold autumn sunlight pours "like heavy southern wine" over the rock, Cecil and his father prepare for a long, difficult winter without saying a word from home — the news of the world they left behind must wait until spring, when annual boats from France can reach Holy Lawrence. It will be a painful exile for his father, but for young Cecil, life retains countless joys as old ties are abandoned and new ones are formed...
