By Right of Purchase - Harold Bindloss - Bog

Flinty romantic drama set on the unforgiving prairies of Canada where only the strong survive.

Charley Leland is a wheat farmer from Western Canada near Winnipeg who at the start of the story is paying a visit to the old country, genteel England, where he falls in love. Charley isn't as wise as the landed gentry he stays with, but he makes up for it with determination and sheer physical vigour. As someone says of him, "I fancy anyone who roused him would see the devil."

The lady of his affections is Carrie Denham, who is effectively sold to him by her aristocratic yet impoverished English family, although she's no shrinking violet, which becomes increasingly clearer as the story progresses. The mercantile nature of the marriage makes her hostile towards him at first. He takes his frustrations out on rustlers and by sowing a bumper crop even as wheat prices drop.

The scene moves to his farm in Canada and about half way through a more refined suitor from England unexpectedly arrives on the prairie, threatening to undermine Carrie's growing respect for her husband, although it also gives her an opportunity to compare and contrast the two men.

I've read and reviewed one novel by Bindloss before, a well written but hideously racist novel set in Africa called The League of the Leopard. Due to a sense of any characters of colour, this novel was simply well written without the racism.

Charley is a simple yet admirable hero, Carrie more than a match for him. Of course she bends to his indefatigable will in the end, but she gives as good as she gets. Their romance is unusually frosty for the most part, I liked it though.

Bindloss must have known the Canadian prairie because he describes it so magnificently. Carrie's thoughts on her husband pretty much sums up the tone of it all:

'Her husband's code was simple, and, perhaps, crude, but it was, at least, inflexible. After all, honour and duty are things well within the comprehension of very simple men. Indeed, it is often the case that, where principles are concerned, the simplest men have the clearest vision.' (Perry Whitford)