No Beautiful Shore.

R. Gordon Moyles is professor emeritus of English at the University of
Alberta, co-author of Imperial Dreams and Colonial Realities: British
Views of Canada, 1880–1914, and author of The Salvation Army and the
Public.

In the final paragraph of this novel, in a touching bit of irony, the mourners at the graveside sing, “In the sweet by and by, We shall meet on that beautiful shore.” As Bride Marsh stands by the grave of her best friend, Wanda Stuckless, who has just committed suicide, she thinks: “Perhaps there is a place where we can go, a place where the things that keep us apart will fall away, leaving just the gifts we can offer and the open spaces in us that we wait for others to fill up. A land where we will fit together instead of being torn apart. Or perhaps it will just end. No beautiful shore.” The pessimism of her life view is expected, for she and Wanda, just out of school and wanting to escape the emotional confines of their Newfoundland outport, are trapped by their circumstances and fated to experience only tragedy. It is, on the whole, a depressing novel—not a boring one, but so unremittingly bleak in its depiction of dysfunctional families and social depravity that it demands a great deal of fortitude just to get through it. But it is certainly worth the effort.