Tess

Patricia Morley is professor emerita of English and Canadian studies at
Concordia University, Japan Foundation Fellow 1991-92, and the author of
Margaret Laurence: The Long Journey Home and As Though Life Mattered:
Leo Kennedy’s Story.

Story and art, in this utterly charming book, go together like peaches
and cream. Tess is set in the Prairies in the early decades of this
century, when European immigrant farmers faced harsh economic conditions
and survival was the name of the game.

Tess is a young girl who lives in a tiny shack with her mother and
father and two older brothers. The family supply of coal (and money)
runs out in the spring, and Tess and her brother must gather dried cow
patties for fuel (they call it “malongo”). This earns the scorn of a
bachelor neighbor, a crusty curmudgeon whose dog Tess later saves from a
pack of coyotes, thus converting an antagonist into an ally.

It would have been easy to sentimentalize themes of rural life, poverty
and neighborhood friction, but Hutchins avoids those pitfalls with prose
that is elegantly simple and direct. The encounter with the coyotes is
high drama.

Ruth Ohi’s art is perfectly matched to the moods created by Hutchins.
The colors are soft, the figures lively, and the human expressions
comical and tender. Tess loves the prairie (“How could you be poor
with the whole prairie at your feet?”), and Ohi captures her feelings
well. Highly recommended.