Crow Lake

The Morrison family lives in Crow Lake, a small farming community in Ontario. Their closest neighbors are the troubled Pyes, who have a farm a mile away. Luke and Matt both work on the Pye farm. Luke is two years older than Matt, and they both have fair hair and gray eyes. Kate is 10 years younger than Matt, and Bo is just a baby. Kate loves Matt dearly but doesn’t spend much time with Luke. 

At 19, Luke is accepted into a teachers’ college, making him the first member of the family to pursue higher education. The family is excited but surprised: Luke isn’t nearly as academic as Matt is. Their parents decide to go into Struan, the closest town, to buy Luke a suitcase. While they’re gone, the siblings go swimming in a nearby lake, where they are visited by redheaded Sally McLean, who talks quietly with Luke. Matt guesses that Sally must be in love with Luke. 

The siblings return to their house. A police car comes down their drive, bringing an officer, Reverend Mitchell, and Dr. Christopherson. Dr. Christopherson sends Kate and Bo back to the beach while he and Reverend Mitchell speak to Matt and Luke. About half an hour later, Matt and Luke come down to the beach. Matt tells Kate their parents have had an accident. They were hit by a logging truck, and neither of them survived.

Twenty years later, Kate focuses on her work and her boyfriend, Daniel. She is troubled by an invitation to the 18th birthday party for Simon, Matt’s son. The card includes a photograph of Simon. Although Kate knows Daniel would love to come, she feels uncomfortable bringing him.

Kate thinks about the legacy of her great-grandmother’s passion for learning. Kate’s father was the only family member to finish high school, after which he settled in Crow Lake. Crow Lake was similar to his home community, but there he was able to improve his life by securing a job at a bank. He married Kate’s mother, his sweetheart from Gaspé. Although the family was extremely non-effusive, when young Kate asked her mother if she loved her, her mother responded, “to distraction.”

After the accident, Kate and Bo cling to Luke and Matt. Their uncle Jamie calls, telling them their Aunt Annie will come soon to help. At the funeral, the siblings receive condolences from the whole community, including “bitter-looking” Calvin Pye, his “scared-looking” wife Alice, and their children: Marie, who is Matt’s age but left school to help with the family; seven-year-old Rosie; and 14-year-old Laurie, who has missed so much school no one expects him to continue. Laurie and Calvin share “the same lean, bony face and the same dark, furious eyes” (32). 

The siblings also receive condolences from Sally, Kate’s teacher Miss Carrington, and deeply religious Mrs. Stanovich, who tells them that Heaven is rejoicing to greet their parents. Kate still resents the memory of this comment

When Kate started seeing Daniel, she avoided talking about her family. Daniel, along with Kate, teaches at the university, where his parents are both professors. He comes from a long line of artists and scholars. Daniel’s family is much more emotive than Kate’s, more prone to both fighting and expressing feelings. She sometimes feels he is trying to study her. He asks about Crow Lake, and she tells him it is tiny, with no downtown. She’s shocked to learn that despite his foreign travels, Daniel has never been up north. Kate tells him about Crow Lake’s founding three or four generations ago. The three founding families are still there: the Janies, the Vernons, and the Pyes. 

As a teenager, Kate learned about the founding families from elderly Miss Vernon. While Kate helps with Miss Vernon’s garden, Miss Vernon tells her about being young and going out to the frozen midwinter lake with her brothers and two of the Pye boys. They weren’t supposed to be playing on the ice, but they did anyway. Eventually, the ice broke, and they all fell into the water. When they climbed out, Norman Pye was so afraid of going home, he instead went down the road, looking for a truck to pick him up, and none of them ever saw him again. This story bothers Kate, who thinks, “three generations back, there was a Pye son who was prepared to risk freezing to death rather than face his father” (42).

Four days after the funeral, Aunt Annie arrives. She is their father’s oldest sister from the Gaspé. She takes a pragmatic attitude, cleaning the house and helping Luke and Matt talk to their father’s lawyer and to the bank. 

One day, Matt takes Kate and Bo to the ponds. They show Bo how to lie on her stomach and watch the tadpoles and fish. Kate remembers Matt explaining that male sticklebacks, rather than females, raise and protect their eggs. She sees Bo’s bunched-up diaper and says Luke isn’t very good at handling diapers, but Matt says he did that one. He smiles, but Kate sees he’s unhappy. Excited by the fish, Bo falls in the pond. They head home.

On the way back, they meet anxious-seeming Marie Pye. She offers Matt condolences and asks if he knows what will happen. Matt says they’re waiting to find out but avoids saying more in front of Kate. Kate is troubled by this interaction. As they walk, she asks Matt what Marie was talking about and begins to cry. Matt reassures her but admits they’ll probably have to move to be with other members of the family. 

Luke and Aunt Annie return home from town. Annie informs them that their father left very little money and that she’s spoken with the extended family. The family agrees, she says, that Luke should still go to teachers’ college, which will require most of the money. None of the family can afford the siblings, but Matt can come work for Annie’s family. If he and Luke earn money to support Bo and Kate, their Aunt Emily and Uncle Ian can house the girls in Rivière-du-Loup.

Kate reflects that although she doesn’t want to exaggerate her childhood suffering, she remembers being absolutely overwhelmed with emotion. 

Matt attempts to show Kate where he’s going on a map, promising to cross the approximately 150 miles to visit her and Bo whenever he can. The siblings and Aunt Annie plan to stay in Crow Lake until Luke leaves for college, with Luke and Matt continuing to work for the Pyes. 

One day, Kate and Annie are sitting on the porch topping beans, and Miss Carrington comes to see them. Annie sends Kate to make tea. When she returns, Annie asks her to take the beans down to the beach. On her way, Kate drops her knife and stops to find it. She overhears Miss Carrington tell Annie that Matt is the cleverest student she’s ever taught, that he will absolutely win a university scholarship if he stays in school, and that it would be a tragedy if he didn’t get the chance to go. Annie says that they have no money to cover his board, even after selling the house. She counters Miss Carrington’s insistence that Matt deserves an education by saying every child in their family deserves to finish school, but that’s simply not realistic. Kate continues to the beach and sits alone. With her knife, she pricks her finger and watches it bleed.

After supper that night, Matt asks Kate how she cut her finger and what she did all day. Finally, she tells him about Miss Carrington’s visit and her comments about Matt. Matt and Luke become tense, staring at each other. Luke asks Kate what Aunt Annie said, and Kate recounts that there’s not enough money for Matt to attend university. Matt gets angry. He tells Luke, “If you want to spend your life feeling guilty because you were born first that’s up to you, but don’t waste it on me” (63). 

In the other room, Annie is trying to put Bo to bed, but Bo is crying and resisting. Luke goes to help, but Annie says he’s not helping Bo by coddling her. The next morning, Luke is gone.

Kate and Bo walk to the lake. They see Big Jim Sumack out on the water. Kate tells Bo that Jim’s family is so poor, his little sister stopped going to school because she didn’t have any shoes. Kate points out a spider to Bo, remembering a time when she and Matt watched a spider trying repeatedly to drag a mayfly from the sand. Matt told her, “Here’s the question, Kate: Is he very very determined, or is his memory so short that he forgets what happened two seconds ago, so he always thinks he’s doing it for the first time? That’s the question” (67). Bo watches the spider for a moment and then steps on it. 

Matt comes home and goes to wash off in the lake. Kate gets him a bar of soap. When he’s done with it, Matt tosses the soap onto the beach, even though they don’t usually do that—it’s too hard to get the sand off again. 

Luke isn’t home by dinner, and neither Kate nor Bo can eat. Aunt Annie asks Matt about Calvin Pye. Matt says Calvin “pays okay” but is “probably insane,” explaining that he’s always furious and aggressive with his children. They hear Luke coming home. Matt rises from the table, but Annie tearfully tells him to sit, and he obeys. Luke comes inside, and Matt furiously asks where he’s been. Luke says he went to see Mr. Levinson, their father’s lawyer. He has decided not to go to teachers’ college, so they don’t have to sell the house. He’ll get an old car and work in Struan, and after Matt finishes high school, they’ll apply for a bank loan to send him to university. 

Matt gets angry, feeling that Luke is sacrificing too much, but Luke is adamant. Kate can’t believe that Matt is trying to talk Luke out of the plan:

I couldn’t understand it. In fact, it was to be years before I understood it. Years before I realized how desperately he wanted what Luke was offering, for Bo and me as well as for himself, and how sick and enraged he was because he felt he had to turn it down (75).

Annie also feels the plan won’t work. She tells Luke that caring for a family is much harder than he realizes, and he cannot both work and raise the girls. They argue until they’re interrupted by Kate, who wails, repeatedly, the word “Please.”