A Dominion of One

Home isn't always where the heart lies.

Irwin Rawson was raised poor on a homestead outside uptight Enderby, Manitoba. Troubled by an ugly, dark family secret, he finds himself fatherless, then soon loses his mother and his home. Expelled from school, dirt mooning under his fingernails, shoveling coal for pennies, Irwin's future is bleak.

Ethel Handley is seventeen, just married, and expecting. It's a bad marriage ending in tragedy before she flees Toronto to train as a teacher. Shedding he...