Proving Ground

June M. Blurton is a retired speech/language pathologist.

This trilogy follows the Torey family from the early 1900s to 1945.
Proving Ground deals with the move of the mother and father from the
Muskokas to the Saskatchewan prairies, their early struggles, the births
of their children, and the success of the wheat harvests, followed by
the horror of the droughts in the 1930s.

When the prairies become a dust bowl, the family is forced to move to
Saskatoon to find work. David is one of the younger sons, and his story
is the focus of most of the second and third books. He rejects the idea
of ever returning to a farm and prepares himself for a university
education. After completing his degree, he joins the Canadian Army and
is sent to England where he finds himself in charge of a group of
emotionally unstable soldiers. Eventually, he is sent to Holland where
he is wounded and subsequently repatriated.

This is an interesting story, but the narrative is plodding and does
not do justice to the subject. The characters are not sympathetic, and
the author tells rather than shows, replacing thoughts and relevant
dialogue with editorializing. That said, there are some interesting
descriptions: Saskatchewan in the early years, building a barn using
straw, Canadian Army officer training, events in Europe in 1945, and
bombers going out at sunset, “dark forms high above the camp scraping
their backs against the threatening sky.”