Animal Heart

by Dania Tomlinson

This book is by a local author and set in the Okanagan.

It takes place around the time when the Okanagan was being settled by British immigrants.  The story is primarily about a girl(Iris) and her mother.  The mother is Welsh, the father is British.  The man brings his family, his wife, a daughter and a son to the Okanagan and they settle in a town, Winteridge,  along the lake that was apparently a native village.  It is rumoured that the settlers are claiming the land for their farms and orchards on land where the natives lived and are buried.

The father leaves at times to take care of mining concerns that belong to the family in Europe and other places.  The mother appears to have epilepsy.  She tries to hide this condition.  The mother regales her children with Welsh folk tales.  The mother and daughter are befriended by a native man who is the volunteer keeper of the local library.  He also seems to be very knowledgeable about native lore and history.

Both the mother and daughter seem to be able to see ghost people and ghost animals wandering around the vicinity.  Both mother and daughter also see a huge water serpent but they are told it is just a large fish.  The girl discovers and unusual fish and keeps it in a jar of water, she keeps it over the years.  Her mother is aware of the fish and sometimes wants it with her.  How the fish could stay alive in a small jar is a mystery to me... magical fish??

The girl becomes close friends with a Japanese girl whose family has come to work the orchards.  The Japanese girl's father works on Iris's family orchard.  Iris's father also buys some land which he leases (with the intent to sell it to) the Japanese girl's father.  Iris and the Japanese girl hang out in a tree house where the Japanese girl sets up a Shinto altar because her parents don't want her to practice the old faith in the new country.

Then a Ukrainian family arrives a man, his wife and two sons.  The man becomes the foreman on the family farm, his wife is hired to look after the family farm and look after the girl's mother. 

When Iris discovers that the Japanese girl is having sex with one of the Ukrainian boys, whom she also likes, she destroys the shrine.  The other Ukrainian boy likes Iris but she ignores/rebuffs him.

When WWI is declared most of the men sign up including Iris's father and brother and the two Ukrainian boys.  The brother who likes Iris asks her to marry him and she impulsively agrees.  As the war goes on the other Ukrainian brother sends letters to Iris  to give to his Japanese lover.  Iris doesn't give them to give them to the girl and actually encourages the girl to marry a Japanese boy her parents want her to marry.

At one point many of the local men go out to capture the monster.  They come back with  a large fish and say all danger has past.  The girl, her mother, and probably the native man know this is not true.
The character late says that the locals have now come to call this mythic creature Ogopogo.

While the war is on Iris has recruited local women to work in the orchard.  Police come looking for the Ukrainian foreman as they suspect with his background he might be a threat.  Initially the family denies they know of him but after the man continually beats his wife, Mary, Iris turn him in.  She thinks this will save Mary but she is arrested and sent to an internment camp with her husband even though she isn't Ukrainian.

The local Japanese people are collected and interned also

The girl's brother and then the father are killed in the war.  The family is devastated.  Her mother becomes essentially bedridden.

The older of the two Ukrainian brothers returns home wounded.  He has lost part of one of his legs and walks on crutches.  He is devastated that his Japanese lover has married.  Initially he and Iris are just friends but eventually they become physical.  Just as Iris discovers she is pregnant the other brother comes home.  Iris has let slip something the older brother had confided in a letter to his Japanese lover and he realizes that Iris has read his letters -- betrayed him.  He tells her to marry his brother and he disappears.  Her mother commits suicide shortly after that.

She does marry the other brother but on their honeymoon cruise she has a miscarriage and her husband realizes she has not been faithful to him.  He claimed he had saved himself for her but she realizes from his love making that this is not true.  When she returns to their cabin on the ship she finds him attacking one of the ship staff. 

When they return to BC their ship is quarantined for a while as several other people are ill.  However, they soon learn that the Spanish flu has decimated the population on land and that most of the people of the town had died.  The town is burned down to avoid spreading the plague.  The woman and her husband move to the coast and set up a home but they never have a happy marriage.

This woman has hurt/betrayed so many people in her life.  When she is old she returns to the village, convincing the ferry captain to drop her off at the deserted town.  She tells him she has arranged someone to come get her later.  But in fact she walks into the water, taking the strange fish with her.

This was an interesting, well written story.  The local interest made it appealing.