Apparently some sequels take longer to appear than others: more than 50 years after the publication of the popular Mrs. Mike, which told of Mary O'Fallon's journey from Boston to Alberta and her marriage to RCMP Sgt. Mike Flanagan, the story continues during WWII with one of Mary's adopted children, Kathy Forquet. Mike has been dead for six years and Kathy, whose background is Cree, decides to learn more about the heritage of her late mother, Oh-Be-Joyful. She is also determined to find out the difference between joy and mere happiness, so she leaves her small Canadian town to train as a nurse in Montreal, which Mary refers to as "sin city." There, Kathy begins to stand up for herself and explores romance with two men, one of whom shares her heritage, the other an Austrian soldier whose wounds she tends. The Mrs. Mike who presumably made the original so charming to generations of readers is hardly present here, merely framing Kathy's tale. As for Kathy, her voice never gains any real sophistication and when she does things like chauffeur a general to Naples because she's an "ace" driver, her Zelig-like position at the center of events lacks verisimilitude. Meanwhile, other characters talk as though they're reading from history texts rather than being participants in the world at war around them. Some downright weird sentences ("There's a big wad of undigested feeling stuck in me") should have been edited out, and in the end, Kathy, a small-scale heroine who is more acted upon than acting, isn't allowed to find joy; it is visited upon her. (Feb. 5)
