A Reckoning of Angels

Nora D.S. Robins is liaison librarian in the University of Calgary
Library.

Canada owes much to the immigrants who sought a new life in a strange
county. Ukrainians were among the most determined settlers. Jan
Dalmynyshyn, big, barrel-chested, and over six feet four inches, was the
sixth son in a family of 14. They worked the land in Ukraine near the
Galician border. The work was hard, the returns poor. Following the
death of his father, Jan went to work in the Ukraine coal fields. In
1896, at the age of 20, he immigrated to the United States and worked in
the Pennsylvania coal pits. His dream was to farm and so he left the
United States for northern Manitoba where he acquired a quarter section
to homestead. There he met the remarkable woman who became his wife.
Together they tackled the harsh life common to homesteading on the
turn-of-the-century prairies. When his mining past caught up with him,
Jan joined the Yukon gold rush.

Jan’s life is linked with that of Byron Bloode, a disgraced scion of
a prominent Winnipeg family. The story ends during the Winnipeg General
Strike of 1919.

A Reckoning of Angels is a major historical novel of the Canadian
prairies. The reader’s emotions are engaged in Jan’s struggle to
survive in a strange land and Byron’s efforts to redeem himself. The
writing is strong and evocative. The book belongs in library
collections. Stuart James Whitley is Deputy Minister of Justice for the
Yukon government, and the author of Climates of Our Birth (1994).