The Winter of the Leechman

Jill Didur teaches English at York University.

The focus of the title story in this collection alternates between
Kathy, an elderly Ukrainian-Canadian woman in the final stages of
cancer, and her nurse. The details of Kathy’s impoverished and
isolated childhood on the prairies in the late 1930s, which emerge
during her drug-induced delirium, haunt the nurse in her dreams. The
simple but remarkable spirit of survival that has characterized
Kathy’s life makes the nurse wonder at the significance of her own.

The other four stories are told from the perspective of recent
immigrants living on the prairie in Ukrainian-Canadian communities. In
“Water Rites,” Natalia learns to cope with the pressures of growing
up as a girl in a patriarchal community during World War II.
“Coyotes” depicts the sense of disillusionment toward the justice
system experienced by a young family when its winter supply of meat is
stolen. The racist treatment of First Nations people by the close-knit
European settler community is questioned by a child in “Me and Mr.
Beauregarde and My Grandfather.” “Sacrament” reflects on the
horrific treatment of a young woman during the negotiation, under the
auspices of the church, of kinship ties and inheritance.

While at times predictable, Bazylevich’s narratives explore the
contradictions in social codes experienced by her characters with a
graceful simplicity that emulates the prairie landscape in which they
unfold.