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Two Solitudes by H. MacLennan
Two Solitudes deals with English-French tensions in Quebec from 1917-1939, and particularly within the Tallard family. Athanase, representing the old Quebecois aristocracy, tries to cooperate with the forces of English Canada. He rejects Catholicism. Tallard loses everything, his elder son is fiercely anti-English; his younger son, Paul, son of Tallard's second Anglophone wife, feels neither French nor English and leaves Quebec . When Paul returns, he becomes involved with Heather; together they represent a new Canada. (Novelist)
Politics
Abandoned on a 1913 voyage to Australia, Nell is raised by a dock master and his wife who do not tell her until she is an adult that she is not their child, leading Nell to return to England and eventually hand down her quest for answers to her granddaughter. (Novelist)
Abandonment/family life/ secrecy
The Poisonwood Bible by B. Kingsolver
The family of a fierce evangelical Baptist missionary--Nathan Price, his wife, and his four daughters--begins to unravel after they embark on a 1959 mission to the Belgian Congo, where they find their lives forever transformed over the course of three decades by the political and social upheaval of Africa. (Literature Resource Centre)(Novelist)(Gale Virtual Reference Library)
Family life / abuse / God-religion
The Scarlet Letter opens with an expectant crowd standing in front of a Boston prison in the early 1640s. When the prison door opens, a young woman named Hester Prynne emerges, with a baby in her arms and a scarlet letter "A" richly embroidered on her breast. For her crime of adultery, to which both the baby and the letter attest, she must proceed to the scaffold and stand for judgment by her community. While on the scaffold, Hester remembers her past. (Literature Resource Centre)(Novelist)(Gale Virtual Reference Library)
Personal Identity / secrecy / marriage
The lives and dreams of four vital, engaging, women revolve around mysterious events at a military aircraft factory in 1941. Wrapped around the stories of these four women, is a mystery. Something's gone wrong with the Mosquitos being built for the war effort -- they keep crashing in flight tests, for no apparent reason. Is the problem with their design, or are they being sabotaged?
Betrayal / love / friendship / ambition
