Getting Married in Buffalo Jump

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

How unromantic can a proposal of marriage be? Sophie Ware has inherited a farm, but can’t manage it alone; her muscular farmhand Alexander Bresnyachuk has no land and wants to take over Sophie’s neglected acres. He quite openly announces his intentions: “I can’t put it to you any plainer. I’d be a good husband, and I think you’d be a pretty good wife.” Sophie is not exactly bowled over. She has never planned to marry “the way they do it in the old country,” as a business arrangement. She, with her WASP background, doesn’t share Sascha’s Ukrainian “old country” views; and she isn’t entirely sure she wants to share his family, either.

Before committing herself to this arrangement, Sophie decides to delve a little deeper into Sascha’s past, about which he is notably silent; so she hies herself off to the Buffalo Jump Bar for a chat with his former Indian girlfriend Annie. Lo and behold, she discovers that Annie has a 14-year-old boy, Sascha’s son, and apparently everyone in town except Sophie is aware of his existence; she also discovers that Sascha’s sister Marfa shared some sort of ill-fated liaison with Annie’s mysterious brother Benedict.

To aid Sophie’s discomfiture, her mother, at first appalled at the idea of her daughter married to an uneducated farmhand, has warmed to the amiable Sascha, and is perfectly happy with his earthy, old-country family.

Is Sophie, a modern, free-spirited Canadian woman of some sophistication, going to settle for this business bargain of a marriage? The more she looks sidelong at Sascha, the more she suspects that yes, she probably will.

Inarticulate Alexander is one of the most appealing heroes of unromantic romance that one could imagine. This delightful story of two likeable people backing into love is a wonderful amalgam of intricate plotting and deft, funny characterization.