Deep Hollow Creek

by Sheila Watson

Stella, institutrice tout juste diplômée, choisit d’aller enseigner aux enfants des colons du hameau isolé de Deep Hollow Creek, en Colombie-Britannique, pendant la Dépression. Influencée par la beauté de la nature environnante, la jeune femme absorbe l’esprit des lieux, qui deviennent peu à peu partie d’elle-même, miroir de ses émotions. Seules les familles qui l’entourent, avec les histoires qu’elles racontent et les épreuves qu’elles endurent, arrivent parfois à ouvrir une brèche dans sa forteresse de solitude, faite de mots et de soliloques. Rédigé dans les années 1930, ce classique des lettres canadiennes d’une puissance et d’une modernité étonnantes ne fut publié en anglais qu’en 1992.

Genres: Fiction, Canada

152 pages, Paperback

First published May 16, 1992

About the author

Born Sheila Martin Doherty, she grew up on the grounds of the provincial mental hospital where her father, Dr. Charles Edward Doherty, was the superintendent until his death in 1922. After studying at Vancouver's Convent of the Sacred Heart, Sheila Doherty finished her university studies at the University of British Columbia in 1933. She then worked as an elementary and high school teacher throughout British Columbia – including two years in Dog Creek (1935–1937), which served as a basis for her first novel, Deep Hollow Creek. She married Canadian poet Wilfred Watson in 1941.

Watson wrote The Double Hook between 1952 and 1954 in Calgary and revised it during a year-long stay in Paris. It was published in 1959 and was instantly recognized as a modern classic.

In 1976, she and her husband moved to Nanaimo, where they died in 1998.

Reviews

[Jill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deep Hollow Creek records Stella’s astute observations of life in the isolated Cariboo Country where she has been newly hired to teach the children of a small community of ranchers near Boulder Creek. The complexities of human nature are set amidst the harsh environment and the economic hardships of the depression era. Despite efforts to draw Stella into their tangle of social alliances, she remains detached from the town overlords, an unnaturally independent woman in her struggle to withstand the isolation and desolation of the people.

[Mary Elizabeth Hughes · Rating 4 out of 5]

For me the best part of this was knowing it was written in the 1930s. It was not written as historical fiction but as a contemporary story. For a sense of depression era struggles in a small inbred community, it's worth reading.

[Laura Veitch · Rating 1 out of 5]

Really disliked the writing style and the story did not entice me to put up with it.