In Depression-era northern Alberta, Theo Mykolayenko returns to the
family homestead an almost-broken man. He was imprisoned for breaking
bureaucratic regulations regarding his own wheat. (He’d similarly
suffered under the Ukraine’s Stalinist regime.) Shandi Mitchell, a
screenwriter and producer (see story on page 32), describes Theo’s slow
movements, the family’s uneasy readjustment, with trimmed, precise
language, active verbs and activated scenes. Mitchell carries this
across the novel’s breadth. Theo returns to the harvest, the family to
happiness. They regain footing, while Theo’s sister and her family, who
live on neighbouring land, lose theirs. It all falls apart again for
Theo. This country’s collective memory holds as generally true that
Western Canada was a wide-open wilderness broken by immigrants: men
with lean, taut arms, women with unbreakable backs, children with early
knowledge of hard, hard work. Without writers such as Mitchell, the
experience and motivations that form the foundation of collective
memory would be forgotten.
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Shandi Mitchell breaks ground
This article appears in Sep 3-9, 2009.