Meron, Carla has written existential fiction: a creative, literary ethnography of East End, located in SW Saskatchewan.
Jacques Lacan, particularly his notion of jouissance, should be evident. The story tells of the disillusionment of some settlers and its impact on neighbourhood and on the refugees/migrants themselves.
The novel is a depiction of day-to-day events for a contemporary settler, whose psychological life is oddly similar to that of any non-indigenous migrant, even those of a century in the past.
The first European settlers came to this part of Palliser’s Triangle in 1907 from places like Minnesota, Ireland, Ontario, Norway and Sweden.
Long before that, these hills had been the hunting ground
of Métis traders, Cree, Blackfoot, Sioux, Nez Perces, Assiniboine, Saulteaux and others.
The story is about the power of land, the Cypress Hills, to shape human endeavour.
™
