Charlotte's Vow

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

Three years after Geordie’s death in the 1909 Extension Mine
Explosion, the McEwan family survives by providing domestic services to
the community. When a miners’ strike seriously compromises their
business, daughter Charlotte, 15, vows “to get herself and what [is]
left of her family far, far away from the coal mines” and secures a
job at the Canadian Explosives dynamite plant at Departure Bay. Rolling
and packing dynamite is a dangerous and delicate task; but even more
dangerous is the unctuous manager who is determined to seduce Lottie.

When the coal company brings in scabs and strikebreakers, the strike
escalates into riots. The company responds by evicting the striking
miners from their homes, importing police and the military to control
angry strikers, imposing martial law, and arresting 179 men—among them
Jock Williamson, a “fiery pro-union activist” and frequent guest in
the McEwan home.

Charlotte is undeterred and determined to keep her vow. The strong
young woman accepts her responsibilities cheerfully, executes her plans
resolutely, and successfully manages to improve the family’s
circumstances by Christmas 1913. By story’s end, she realizes “she
[will] miss the little village” and resolves to “become a teacher”
and “stay in Extension and try to make things better.”

Although the protagonist’s character is well drawn and effective, the
secondary characters emerge as types, and the dialogue is sometimes
stilted. Reliance on passive verbs tends to hamper the flow of the prose
and slow the pace of the plot. Nevertheless, Woodson has presented a
useful historical glimpse into a troubled era of British Columbia’s
past. Recommended.