The Love Song of Romeo Paquette

Jean Free, a library consultant, was an elementary-school teacher and
librarian in Whitby, Ontario.

Romeo Paquette has retired in Edmonton on his brewery pension.
Constance, his wife of nearly 40 years, is dead. His beloved
granddaughter, Marie, marries, but Romeo continues to live in the
rooming house on Terrabain Street with the Corset Lady and his friends
Popi, the poet; Popi’s wife, Rita; and the Widow Tree. Paquette loves
his flower garden but has trouble understanding young people, modern
music, today’s social customs, and new technology. He longs for a
simpler time of 30 years past, of picnics with friends on the north
Saskatchewan River, and youthful country trips of past summers—“a
time when everything was possible.”

This novel contains funny, sensitive episodes of Romeo and Popi making
pickled beef, and of Marie’s sophisticated dinner party, and uses
powerful Canadian images.

In The Love Song of Romeo Paquette, Frey’s second book, she has
written with compassionate tenderness about human foibles and the
loneliness of old age as life changes and “things will never be the
same again.” This is a thoughtful, tender book about modern society.