To Reap the Finest Wheat
★★★★★ 4.56 average · GoodreadsA heart-wrenching tale of love, loss, and survival on Saskatchewan's vast 1925 prairie — the story of a young woman who left Ukraine to begin a new life, and found a world that would change her forever.
About the book
After an ill-fated affair with an Orthodox priest leaves Katerina Danek unmarried and with an illegitimate son, she enters into a Faustian bargain: she gives up her child and her cultured life in L'viv, Ukraine, in exchange for an arranged marriage to the widower Viktor Senyk and a fresh start in the isolated prairie town of Bilik, Saskatchewan. On arrival she finds Viktor has a ten-year-old son, a fragile boy still grieving his mother — and that her new husband, so respected in public, is in private an abusive alcoholic.
When a tragic farm accident and an encounter at a mental hospital raise Katerina's suspicions about the fate of Viktor's late wife, she becomes desperate to escape. But she is penniless — and she has grown to love the boy. Riddled by guilt, she must choose between saving herself and protecting her stepson. Or can she do both? Told with the emotional precision of a writer who spent three decades listening to people's hardest seasons.
Reading-Group Guide
Twelve discussion questions on duty, displacement, and the marriages we grow into — plus historical context on the 1925 prairie. Read on the page or print for your meeting.
“A hopeful feminist tale that advocates for women and children, without demonizing all men.” Andree Graveley, Poet