Old Woman Island

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

After a “wake-up call” heart attack, Timothy, an accomplished
journalist, takes time off to write a novel about Flynn’s Landing
where, at the age of 12, he spent a memorable summer with his paternal
grandparents. He returns to the Saskatchewan community to find
everything changed. The sawmill is gone and his grandparent’s rambling
house has burned to the ground. Most significantly, Orlie, his partner
in mischief, died three years earlier in an airplane crash. Timothy
meets (and is immediately attracted to) Orlie’s widow, Angela, who
confides that she is broke, despite Orlie’s claim that he had enough
money “to see us through two lifetimes.”

Thoughts of the summer he spent with his grandparents overwhelm Timothy
that first night. He recalls how the casual freedom his grandparents
accorded him liberated him from his overprotective, socially correct
mother who deemed everything he liked “too physically dangerous or too
apt to warp his mind.” He also recalls being dragged into numerous
scrapes by the amoral and irrepressible Orlie, son of the sawmill
foreman. On one of their adventures, they discovered a secret cave on
“haunted” Old Woman Island, and it was there that Orlie hid his
pilfered treasures. Returning to the cave 37 years later, Timothy finds
the cache of money dripping with “greenish mildew … a bed of pasty
mush.” In the end, Timothy decides to stay in Flynn’s Landing for a
few years, writing his book and helping Angela.

The novel is more an adult’s nostalgic view of youthful freedom than
the adventure story of two young boys; however, both elements combine to
produce an entertaining and absorbing whole. Lalor’s portrait of
Flynn’s Landing, an area populated by Cree, Métis, and Anglos,
resonates with colorful descriptions and characters. Recommended.