(The Original) Shadows On The Rock (1931)
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Book Description
Shadows on the Rock is a novel by the American writer Willa Cather. The novel is set in 17th century Quebec describing the quiet, isolated life of Cecile Auclair and her father, the town apothecary.
Excerpt:
One afternoon late in October of the year 1697, Euclide Auclair, the philosopher apothecary of Quebec, stood on the top of Cap Diamant gazing down the broad, empty river far beneath ...
MoreShadows on the Rock is a novel by the American writer Willa Cather. The novel is set in 17th century Quebec describing the quiet, isolated life of Cecile Auclair and her father, the town apothecary.
Excerpt:
One afternoon late in October of the year 1697, Euclide Auclair, the philosopher apothecary of Quebec, stood on the top of Cap Diamant gazing down the broad, empty river far beneath him. Empty, because an hour ago the flash of retreating sails had disappeared behind the green island that splits the St. Lawrence below Quebec, and the last of the summer ships from France had started on her long voyage home.
As long as La Bonne Esp�rance was still in sight, many of Auclair's friends and neighbours had kept him company on the hill-top; but when the last tip of white slid behind the curving shore, they went back to their shops and their kitchens to face the stern realities of life. Now for eight months the French colony on this rock in the North would be entirely cut off from Europe, from the world. This was October; not a sail would come up that wide waterway before next July. No supplies; not a cask of wine or a sack of flour, no gunpowder, or leather, or cloth, or iron tools. Not a letter, even--no news of what went on at home. There might be new wars, floods, conflagrations, epidemics, but the colonists would never know of them until next summer. People sometimes said that if King Louis died, the Minister would send word by the English ships that came to New York all winter, and the Dutch traders at Fort Orange would dispatch couriers to Montreal.
The apothecary lingered on the hill-top long after his fellow townsmen had gone back to their affairs; for him this severance from the world grew every year harder to bear. It was a strange thing, indeed, that a man of his mild and thoughtful disposition, city-bred and most conventional in his habits, should be found on a grey rock in the Canadian wilderness. Cap Diamant, where he stood, was merely the highest ledge of that fortified cliff which was "Kebec,"--a triangular headland wedged in by the joining of two rivers, and girdled about by the greater river as by an encircling arm. Directly under his feet was the French stronghold,--scattered spires and slated roofs flashing in the rich, autumnal sunlight; the little capital which was just then the subject of so much discussion in Europe, and the goal of so many fantastic dreams.
Auclair thought this rock-set town like nothing so much as one of those little artificial mountains which were made in the churches at home to present a theatric scene of the Nativity; cardboard mountains, broken up into cliffs and ledges and hollows to accommodate groups of figures on their way to the manger; angels and shepherds and horsemen and camels, set on peaks, sheltered in grottoes, clustered about the base.
Further Reading:
Written by Willa Cather and available from ADB Publishing
Sapphira and the Slave Girl
A Lost Lady (1923)
Lucy Gayheart (1935)
Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)
Shadows on the Rock (1931) - This Book
The Professor's House (1925)
Obscure Destinies
My Mortal Enemy
Not Under Forty
Publisher | ADB Publishing |
Binding | Kindle Edition (75 editions) |
Reading Level | Uncategorized
|
# of Pages | N/A |
ISBN-10 | B003XYEC8Q |
Publication Date | 07/30/2010 |
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