Falling Hard for May Agnes Fleming

The Midnight Queen

Mrs May Agnes Fleming

New York: Hurst, [n.d.]

256 pages

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

Related post:
May Agnes Fleming: Lost Lady of CanLit

Of Downton Abbey and Our Magnificent Folly

December. Time has come to admit that we've failed.

Eleven months ago, with my friends Chris Kelly and Stanley Whyte, I set out to read each and every book by Richard Rohmer within the calendar year. We're right now on our eighteenth. While that figure may seem impressive, there are still twelve to go.

Who'd've thunk he'd written so much?

We all knew what we were getting into. I was pretty certain that Rohmer had published something in the area of thirty books. What I didn't anticipate was that they would be so hard to find. A child of the 'sixties, I well remember a time when Rohmer topped bestseller lists. His books were on display at the local WH Smith and could be bought at every drug store in town. I expected – as did Stan and Chris – that used copies would be plentiful and cheap. Hell, last December I picked up a copy of Red Arctic for a dollar.

What I didn't know is that after his 1973 smash Ultimatum, Rohmer's sales began to decline. The first break in his string of bestsellers came in 1984 with the flop How to Write a Best Seller. There's irony for you. By the end of that decade, he was no longer  published in mass market – readers of thrillers will recognize the significance of that fact. Second printings have been rare.

How rare?

The only book that has seen any sort of second life in the past quarter-century is the one we're currently reading: John A.'s Crusade. First published in 1995 by Stoddart, two years ago Dundurn reissued the novel as Sir John A.'s Crusade and Seward's Magnificent Folly.

"About the only general suggestion I can make about choosing a title is that it should in some way suggest the plot," says Rohmer in How to Write a Best Seller. John A.'s Crusade did just that. Set during the months leading to Confederation, it sees the future prime minister travelling about Europe – by train, warship and carriage – on a secret mission to purchase Alaska from the Russians. Meanwhile across the pond, William Seward, Andrew Johnson's Secretary of State, is working on the very same goal.

If anything, Sir John A.'s Crusade and Seward's Magnificent Folly suggests even more of the plot. And, as my pal Stan points out, it also provides something of a tie-in to the film Lincoln, in which Seward figures prominently.

I wonder whether Sir John A.'s Crusade, Seward's Magnificent Folly and a Visit to Highclere Castle was ever considered. Too long, I suppose.

Highclere Castle features prominently on the cover of the new edition; Sir John A a little less so. Cast your eyes down and you'll find this banner: "BRITAIN'S REAL DOWNTON ABBEY AND CANADA'S BIRTH".

I wasn't aware of any connection between Confederation and Downton Abbey. Truth be told, I didn't see that the show has had much to do with Canada at all. Then I read the back cover:

In late 1866, John A. Macdonald and other Fathers of Confederation arrived in London to begin discussions with Britain to create Canada. Macdonald and two of his colleagues stayed briefly at Highclere Castle in Hampshire, the stately home of the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, Britain's colonial secretary. Those are the facts. 

Today Highclere Castle is widely known as the real-life location for the popular television series Downton Abbey. In Richard Rohmer's novel, Macdonald talks with Carnarvon at Highclere about legislation to give Canada autonomy, the danger of Irish Fenian assassination plots, and the proposed American purchase of Alaska from Russia.

It is indeed a fact that "Macdonald and two colleagues stayed briefly at Highclere Castle". Those two colleagues were George-Étienne Cartier and Alexander Galt; being an overnight stay theirs was several hours longer than that offered today's paying visitors.

So, yeah, "stayed briefly" seems about right.

What irks is the author's new Preface. All about the tenuous link between the novel and television show, for the most part the thing is sigh-inducing:

Downton Abbey, as it appears in the magnificent television series is actually Highclere Castle, often known as Carnarvon Castle. It was there that much of the Downton Abbey series was and will be shot. 

This sentence follows, challenging conventional history :

It was also there that the difficult quest for Canada's status as an ultimately self-governing monarchy nation truly began on December 11, 1866, as this piece of historical fiction demonstrates.

Never mind the Great Coalition, the Charlottetown Conference, the Quebec Conference and the London Conference, Rohmer has it that an after-dinner conversation over port and cigars marks the true beginning of the country we call Canada. The claim is absurd, and is made truly shameful by the simple fact that this piece of historical fiction demonstrates no such thing. Macdonald and colleagues do nothing more than report on current negotiations… oh, and Fenians!

Here, in full, is how the real Carnarvon described Rohmer's birth of a nation in his diary:

from The Political Diaries of the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, 1857–1890
Cambridge UP, 2010

See how much work goes into reading Richard Rohmer?

Imagine how much time has been wasted walking across rooms to retrieve books thrown against walls.

Related posts:

Resolved to Reading Richard Rohmer
Still Reading Richard Rohmer. Is Alice Munro?
Recycling Richard Rohmer

Richard Rohmer Recycles (Again)

Of Thucydides, Themistocles and Richard Rohmer

Chasing Down a Thriller Writer's Hidden Verse

I is for Intellectual Property

Protect yours!

Launcelot Cressy Servos shows us how:

Mr Servos' notice faces a page in which he claims copyright; a second copyright claim follows on the obverse.

Authors, scenario writers, printers, publishers, motion picture producers and others take note: Frontenac and the Maid of the Mist is now in the public domain. Not in the US or the UK, mind, but it's up for grabs in Canada – and I'm telling you that this novel of the Comte de Frontenac and his fictitious lady love is very Canadian. I haven't actually managed to get through Frontenac and the Maid of the Mist, but I have read the jacket flaps. After thumbing through the book itself, I can attest to their thoroughness and accuracy. Skip ahead to the fifth paragraph for the story itself.

That's it, the entire plot, including the climactic final scene. The pen picture painted does indeed make a deep impression. I was most taken by the poetry of Theala's last words in warding off Frontenac and accepting her fate:

"Great Chief! Great Chief!" said she, "I pray thee desist! Go I from you forever to be Maid of the Mist! From this rocky ledge to you torrent I go. To dwell eternal with the Manitou in the Falls below. And my spirit wafted upward on yonder haze, eternal shall be for men always to gaze! As I leave you forever I bid you goodby! Stand and watch my soul rising on yonder mist high!"

You can't write this stuff, but Launcelot Cressy Servos did.

So, let's get on it, shall we? Nearly ninety years have passed since Frontenac and the Maid of the Mist first saw print and we're still awaiting that motion picture adaptation.

Who have we to blame?

Only ourselves.

Remembering la Corriveau

Executed 250 years ago today, Marie-Josephte Corriveau – la Corriveau – was a survivor. Just thirty at the time of her death, she'd long outlived her ten brothers and sisters, all of whom died in childhood. Marie-Josephte also survived her first husband, Charles Bouchard, the father of her three children. Widowed at twenty-seven, in 1761 she married Louis Étienne Dodier who, like Charles,was a farmer from St.Vallier on the St. Lawrence, just south of Ile d'Orléans. A little over eighteen months later, poor Louis was found dead in the barn, his head nearly caved in. The horse was to blame... or so it was thought at first. Then the rumours began to circulate.

In the spring of 1763, Marie-Josephte and her father, Joseph, were brought before a military tribunal. Joseph was found guilty of the murder and was sentenced to death. Marie-Josephte would've been flogged and branded as an accessory had it not been for her father's confession to a priest. Seems she'd been more than willing to see dear old dad swing for a crime she had in fact committed. At a second trial she confessed.

After Marie-Josephte was hanged, her body was placed in a gibbet – quite possibly the one pictured above! She was then transported across the St Lawrence and was suspended for five weeks from a post at the intersection of what are today Rue St-Joseph and Boulevard de l'Entente in Lévis.

Now, watch those property values soar.

An Anglo Quebecer, I first read of la Corriveau as a teenager in Philippe-Joseph Aubert de Gaspé's Les Anciens Canadiens. Her presence in English-language Canadian literature is negligible, though she did get off to an early start; William Kirby featured Marie-Josephte in his 1877 novel The Golden Dog. Here la Corriveau is a poisoner for hire, a direct descendant of Catherine Deshayes, the 17th-century serial killer known as la Voisine.

The Golden Dog: A Romance in the Days of Louis Quinze in Quebec
William Kirby
Toronto: Musson/Montreal: Montreal News Co, n.d.

Others, historians included, have added to the legend. Charles, her first husband, has come to be seen as one of her victims; in some tales,  five more ill-fated husbands are added to the mix. And what about the ten dead siblings?

The 20th-century brought more novels, a ballet, and plays by Victor-Lévy Beaulieu, Anne Hébert and Guy Cloutier.. She lives on in this century:

There's even something for the kiddies:

Were I not so far away, I'd make the effort to attend this evening's Marie-Josephte Corriveau Commemoration in Quebec City.

As it is, I'll be raising a glass, if only in recognition of the contribution she made – unwittingly – to the country's literature.

A black oatmeal stout with ruby highlights, la Corriveau seems the obvious choice, but like the lady herself, it's rarely seen in Upper Canada.

A bonus:

Just look at what the sorry souls at VDM Publishing have on offer:

Trotsky: The Accidental Terrorist

The Sixth of December
Jim Lotz
Markham, ON: Paperjacks, 1981

I'm both pleased and honoured that expat Canadian writer Mark Reynolds has contributed this, the very first Dusty Bookcase guest post. More of Mark's writing can be found online at View of the Marching Fishes. 

When Brian offered me the opportunity to write a guest-post on The Sixth of December by Jim Lotz, I jumped at the chance. It struck me as inspired that someone had thought to link Trotsky’s brief imprisonment in Nova Scotia to the Halifax Explosion. I imagined a Communist of Unrequited Dreams, or perhaps a Forrest Gumpsky – here Trotsky founds the Red Army, there he blows up Halifax, and during his New York exile he advises a young F. Scott Fitzgerald on writing fiction.

The Sixth of December starts 11 months before the titular date, 100 meters under the Atlantic, where a German U-Boat and its crew lay slowly dying. Warships of the Royal Navy prowl the surface, drawing their net of depth charges ever closer on the helpless sailors below.

Finally, Kapitanleutnant Wolfgang Von Lothringen – aristocrat, conveniently English-educated, fanatic in the cause of the Fatherland – makes a desperate decision to make a break for it, surfacing his vessel and firing his last torpedo at his tormentors. However, the torpedo misfires and U-42 is destroyed. Von Lothringen survives, along with one crew member – Lothar Brutcher – and a Scottish merchant captain unwillingly aboard as a prisoner. The other 30 sailors under his command die, never to trouble the narrative or the conscience of their captain again.

As an opening scene, it’s a doozy, and it contains within it all the best and worst that the book had to offer. I believe the opening dialogue is best excused by the fact that both the characters were desperately starved of oxygen when speaking it:

”Do you see this?” [Von Lothringen] asked, pulling a cigarette case out of his pocket and thrusting under the nose of the Scot. “Made of steel, from the battlefield of Verdun. My brother and his regiment went in with the first wave on February 21 last year. Only ten men came out alive. One of them made this for me – in memory of my brother. Then he went back and was killed.”

   The Scot shook his head. “You’re a stubborn lot, you Germans.”

On the other hand, while the means by which Von Lothringen was trapped by the Royal Navy was similarly hard to believe, it turned out to have been based on fact.

Indeed, as I read on, it turned out that there was very little outside of the doings of the main characters in The Sixth of December that was not based on fact. The book might be that rarest creature of all – a historical fiction that does not fictionalize any of the history. That speaks well of Lotz’s professional standards – he is still, as far as I am aware, an active author of Maritimes history. The man clearly loves Nova Scotia and its past; I learned a great deal from The Sixth of December, but learning was not what I was hoping to gain from a book that promised “The Terrorist Plot of the Century!”

Lotz’s fidelity to the Muse of History puts some unfortunate constraints on the story. Leon Trotsky would have made a fairly compelling arch-villain for such a book, had Lotz been willing to depart from the record on occasion. Lotz was not, so the founder of the Red Army disappears from the narrative about one third of the way through. As Trotsky took his leave of the Amherst prisoner of war camp seven months before the Imo and Mont Blanc collided, I didn’t exactly expect him to be cackling from atop the town clock as Halifax burned, but readers might have appreciated a coded telegram or two, or a least a spit-take from the Kremlin.

Leon Trotsky, St Petersburg, May 1917, weeks after being released from the Amherst camp.

Trotsky entered Halifax by chance, a transit point en route to the Russian Revolution in which he was anxious to play his part (“an unknown exile now, within a year this man’s name would be on the lips of all. And he would leave a lasting mark on history.”) Realizing Halifax’s strategic importance, he orders his companions to gather as much information as they could on the harbour’s defenses.

The reasoning for this was somewhat convoluted: Trotsky planned to pull Russia out of the war, which he believed would both cause the Allies to lose, and also to intervene in the Revolution. If the latter occurred, he believed the Allies would use Halifax as a staging port (those who know of the Siberian Expeditionary Force will realize he was not entirely wrong in this, but that adventure launched from the West Coast). American involvement in the War both obviated and added urgency to the plot, in ways I cannot wrap my head around even after three readings of the explanation.

After Trotsky is detained, that justification was jettisoned in favour of revenge against the Canadians for the indignity of his imprisonment. In his brief time in Amherst (less than a month) he managed to convert a number of the other prisoners to socialism, and hatched an escape plot with the most promising of them – Von Lothringen among them. Trotsky’s powers of persuasion in such a brief period against enemy sailors were also hard to believe, but again, the rendering was scrupulously true.

Trotsky’s arrival date in Amherst (April 6, 1917) was tantalizingly near that of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, and so that event makes an appearance as well. Our hero, Sergeant Jack Dobney, a North-End Halifax boy strong of jaw and stalwart of heart, fights his way though the battle, only to “catch a Blighty.” In the dressing station he meets pure-hearted but strong-willed Beth, a privileged South-End beauty serving near the front as a nurse. Sparks fly. I suspect the headiness of the moment could only have been amplified by an unnamed future author of high-school textbooks in the background of their burgeoning romance observing that “They’ll say that this is the day that Canada became a nation.”

Dobney’s wound is his ticket back to Halifax and, compelled by the conventions of the genre, Beth follows shortly after. Dobney is eventually enmeshed in a military police investigation involving supplies intended for the front going missing from the docks. Meanwhile, back in Amherst, Von Lothringen, Brutcher, and Kurt Hafner (another German submariner) escape. Von Lothringen makes it to Halifax, where he spends the next few months establishing himself as a bon vivant Swedish count, aided by money and materiel supplied by the apparently pervasive Communist underground active in Halifax at the time. The various deus ex Bolsheva means by which our fugitive’s adventures were furthered were always attributed by them in marveling tones to Trotsky, though again, the author refuses to trifle with the historical record enough to detail his involvement.

The Canada Car and Foundry Co., Amherst, Nova Scotia, in 1931. Fourteen years earlier it served as the prisoner of war camp at which Trotsky was held.   

Brutcher and Hafner have a harder time of it, escaping in a dory, but getting caught in a squall on the Bay of Fundy. The boat capsizes and they are separated, with Brutcher swimming for shore, though the exigencies of his situation did not block his capacity to recall geography trivia (“Dimly, Lothar remembered that this Bay had the highest tides in the world”). Lucky Lothar is rescued by a simple Acadian girl, learning her name (Monique) at the top of page 138 and falling into her bed at the bottom of page 139. The fanatic Hafner recalls him to his duty two pages later (he spent that time murdering a priest), but in the interim we learn much about Acadian history, in which Lotz was unable to resist forcing Monique to deliver some awkward exposition on the story of Legless Jerome.

Once the three Germans are reunited in Halifax, and Jack Dobney is undercover attempting to tease out the nature of the conspiracy, Lotz dispenses with most of the Nova Scotia sightseeing and historical trivia in favour of what I can happily report is a fairly engrossing cat-and-mouse game, the stakes of which are all the more foreboding for being known. The meticulous research (mostly) aids the plot and heightens the tension, rather than distracting from it as in the earlier pages. Unsuspected nuances of character appear, much to the book’s benefit.

But… but but but. The Terrorist Plot of the Century? The smiling face of Trotsky rising from the smoke of the Mont Blanc on the cover? Well, poor Mr Lotz set himself an impossible challenge. How does one turn the Halifax Explosion into the Terrorist Plot of the Century without altering a word of the historic record? That, alas, was a circle even 2,300 tons of pitric acid, 200 tons of TNT and 35 tons of benzene could not square. The German saboteurs failed in their own attempt to blow up the Mont Blanc (on December 5th), but did contrive to make it on to the bridge of the Imo just as the two ships were heading towards each other in the Halifax Harbour Narrows. It proved to be an excellent vantage point to watch Halifax be destroyed, with almost no effort required on their part.

The Sixth of December

The Sixth of December
Jim Lotz
Markham, Ont.: Paperjacks. 1981

For your consideration, a Richard Rohmer-approved thriller that imagines Leon Trotsky responsible for the Halifax Explosion.

That's meant to be Trotsky on the front cover. Don't recognize him? How about here, in this detail from the back?

Don't believe me? Well, just read the cover copy. Blow it up if you wish.

No pun intended.

A 19th-century Céline Dion and Her Horrible Hunchback Husband

'The Lane That Had No Turning'

The Lane That Had No Turning

     and Other Tales Concerning the People of Pontiac

Gilbert Parker

New York: A.L. Burt, 1900

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

Related post:

Further Along The Lane That Had No Turning

Of War and Methodism (but mostly Methodism)

Neville Trueman, the Pioneer Preacher:

     A Tale of the War of 1812

W.H. Withrow

Toronto: William Briggs, 1900

252 pages

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

Ralph Connor's Beautiful War of 1812

The Runner: A Romance of the Niagaras

Ralph Connor [pseud. Rev. Charles W. Gordon]

New York: Triangle, 1939

481 pages 

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

POD Cover of the Month: Romany of the Snows

Romany of the Snows – what we sticklers refer to as A Romany of the Snows – another fine product from print on demand house Tutis. Take care, bears are not nearly as cute, cuddly, petite or domesticated as they'd have you believe. From the novel:

I got sick and numb. There on that anvil of snow and ice I saw a big white bear, one such as you shall see within the Arctic Circle. His long nose fetching out towards the bleeding sun in the sky, his white coat shining. But that was not the thing — there was another. At the feet of the bear was a body, and one clawed foot was on that body — of a man.

First edition:

New York: Stone & Kimball, 1896

Runner up:


The Tutis take on Michel and Angele – what we sticklers refer to as Michel and Angèle – Sir Gilbert's romantic tale of two young lovers in 16th-century England.

Related posts:

POD Cover of the Month: Montreal for Tourists..

POD Cover of the Month: Rila of Ingelside
POD Cover of the Month: The Simple Adventures of a Memsahib

A Communist's Bodice Ripper?

The Governor's Mistress

Warren Desmond [pseud. Dyson Carter]

Toronto: News Stand Library, 1950

Oh, yes, a bodice is ripped, but I'm not so sure that this novel quite fits the genre. There's little romance in The Governor's Mistress, and passion, though present, is not as pervasive as cover copy would have you believe.

VIRILE - VIOLENT - WARM - WICKED - This was Angeline

Virile? Can a woman be virile? The OED answers in the negative. But then Angeline isn't violent either. She is warm though... and, it is implied, wicked in the sack.

Angeline – referred to as "Angel" on the book's back cover (and nowhere else) – is Angeline Paradis, a beautiful English spy who is sent into the heart of 17th-century New France. Hers, cover copy tells us, "is a tale kept out of school-books". Makes perfect sense; after all, Angeline was the creation of the author, and exists nowhere outside this book. She moves through pages populated by figures from our history... and it is here that this novel begins to falter. There is a supposition that the reader will know these men – they are all men – that is misguided. Frontenac? Yes. Radisson? Yes. But how many of us are familiar with the scandal and intrigue surrounding François-Marie Perrot, who served as Governor of Montreal from 1669 to 1684?

This Montrealer recognized his name.

That's all.

Pity the poor American reader, who I'm assuming has been taught little of the political machinations of New France. After all, it was to these folks that The Governor's Mistress was marketed. Its author, Dyson Carter, a card carrying member of the Communist Party of Canada, hid behind the pseudonym Warren Desmond only so that the novel might be sold south of the border.

The Governor's Mistress isn't so much a bad book as an irritating one. Stuff happens... but so often this takes place off-stage. When Radisson is put on trial for treason, an event that never actually occurred, he escapes the courtroom by painting his face with ghoulish features: "Thus had Radisson used the phosphorus oil he brought with him from Rupert's workshop." And thus we hear for the first and last time of Rupert's workshop.

Ultimately, The Governor's Mistress is a grand disappointment. The Harlequin set will find little in the way of romance, those seeking something spicy will be left dangling, and readers like myself who'd hoped for an oddball Marxist reading of life in New France will be met with nought but paper, ink and glue.

Object and Access: One of the publisher's more competent productions, the type is actually quite legible. I counted only two typos, which might just be a NSL best. Twelve copies are currently listed for sale online at between US$4 and US$18.29. All appear to have significant flaws, which leads me to think that mine could be the best copy out there. One copy – one – is housed by the University of Toronto's Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. After that: rien.

Related post: Dyson Carter's Long Exercise in Political Pathology

Getting to the Fenian Raids

In the Midst of Alarms

Robert Barr

New York: Stokes, 1894

With St Patrick's Day on the horizon thoughts turn to the Fenians. And why not? Their ill-considered incursions helped induce the birth of this country. Tragicomic, the Fenian Raids seem suited for satire, so why is that after nearly fifteen decades this forgotten novel stands alone in using those troublous times as a backdrop?

Never having before read Barr, I had more than modest expectations for this book. After all, the writer was very much respected in his day. True, he was "popular", but so were his friends Joseph Conrad, Henry James and Arthur Conan Doyle. And consider this: as a volunteer soldier, Barr helped defend the Niagara frontier during the raids. Sadly, nothing of his experience seems much in evidence here.

The novel begins well with a strong chapter focused on the reunion of old school chums Stillson Renwick and Richard Yates in a Fenian infested Buffalo hotel. Fifteen years have passed since their last meeting, during which Renwick has become a proper, polite professor at the University of Toronto. Yates, in stark contrast, has quit Canada for a fast-paced life as a New York journalist. He is a drinker, a gambler, a womanizer and overall bon vivant, a man whose drive has very nearly put him behind asylum gates. A change of pace is required – so he's been told – and the journalist has decided a week or two of camping with his passive pal Renwick is just the thing to cure his ills.

The next day, the pair crosses the Niagara into Canada, leaving behind all intrigue and excitement for woodland pleasures. "The Odd Couple Go Camping" isn't much of an idea; Barr seems to recognize as much by introducing Kitty Bartlett and Margaret Howard, two attractive farmers' daughters for the men to pursue. Further pages – chapters, in some instances – are devoted to topics such as soap making, bread baking, and the dueling roles of the rural blacksmith and village grocer in the years preceding Confederation. All quite accurate observations, from what I can tell, but it does become a bit tiresome. The chapter devoted to the mid-19th-century public library policies of Canada West bores even a bookish fellow like myself.

But where are the Fenians in all this? They're rarely mentioned; no one takes the threat of invasion seriously. "They won't venture over", predicts journalist Yates, the man with his ear closest to the ground. "They fight with their mouths. It's the safest way."

When the Fenians do finally invade, well over half-way through the novel, encounters are fleeting. Renwick and Yates are captured, marched to the Fenian camp, have a brief exchange with "General" John O'Neill, and are released. The professor and the journalist are far away when the fighting begins. Barr's description of the absurd comedy of errors that was the Battle of Ridgeway is limited to a dispassionate, two-page factual account that reads like something ripped from an old high school textbook.

"The farce is known as the Battle of Ridgeway, and would have been comical had it not been that death hovered over it," Barr concludes.

Too soon?

Bloomer: "Touch a man on his business, and he generally responds by being interested."

Object: A small volume with microscopic type, this "SECOND EDITION" features five substandard illustrations by C. Moore Smith.

Small wonder that later editions featured scenes imagined by the talented Harrison Fisher.

Access: Our academic libraries succeed while our public libraries fail. Those of Fort Erie, Port Colborne and Welland, all key communities in the Battle of Ridgeway, lack copies. In Canada, only the taxpayers of Toronto and Vancouver are properly served. The novel is much more common south of the border.

In the Midst of Alarms was a bestseller in its day, and was reprinted for many years thereafter, but there isn't much evidence of this online. The armful of 19th-century copies currently listed range between ten and thirty dollars. As might be expected, print on demand farms dominate, displaying editions of ugliness and ineptitude. Nabu Press is the worst offender, offering the booklover a choice of covers depicting the snow covered mountains of southern Ontario and the ancient ruins of Fort Erie.

Amazon Customer Review: 'A Jonny come lately approach to writing about the American frontier.'

Related posts:

Homophobes and Book Burners Weigh In

Amazon Customer Review: 'My review has more intelect'

Amazon Customer Review: 'I could not throw it away or burn it as I would have liked to do'