Klanty's Daughters

Darleen R. Golke is a high-school teacher and librarian in Winnipeg.

Fresh from a 10-month training program, the 18-year-old narrator of
Klanty’s Daughters begins his first teaching assignment in the dying
Prairie town of Baltic in September of 1953. Thomson never provides more
than the nickname “Bright Boy” for the narrator, but allows the
first-person reminiscences, observations, and opinions to develop the
story.

The reader meets stereotypical caricatures of the locals as the year
unfolds and the young teacher joins in town activities. Stookie becomes
his guide and mentor, helping him to navigate the intricacies of
small-town life; Tall Wall acts as his educational mentor. Wayne Klanty
and his two stepdaughters respectively repel and attract. The characters
who play roles as friends or acquaintances are not developed, but merely
sketched in language that sometimes borders on the pretentious. Even the
narrator’s romantic interest receives superficial treatment.
Promiscuity, infidelity, racism, drunkenness—an amazing list of vices
and human weaknesses seem to attack the inhabitants of the small town.
By way of contrast, the narrator and his fellow teacher engage in
rambling discourses on history, literature, philosophy, science, and, of
course, education.

Klanty’s Daughters provides colorful descriptions of small-town life
on the Prairies during the 1950s. Readers who enjoy chronicles of an
earlier era will appreciate it; others may feel frustrated by the
predictable plot and weak characterization.