I'll Be Watching (review)

George Loney has never had his wife's strength of character, and when dust and hail claim his Saskatchewan farm and force the family into the dying town, he begins his retreat into the rye bottle. After death claims his wife, Margaret, he spinelessly follows his neighbors' advice to marry widow Effie, who quickly proves to be a shrew to her new husband and a religious tyrant to her stepchildren. George's four children know how to pull in harness together, though, and even after Effie locks George out of the house, leaves him to freeze to death on his own porch, and then runs off with a Bible salesman, Ran, Nora, Jim and Addie are determined to make it on their own. Ran enlists in the Canadian Air Force, Nora manages the house, Jim does what he can with odd jobs and hunting, and Addie, mute since his mother's death, is the fragile darling who holds the family together emotionally. Set on the Canadian prairie in World War II, this has all the plot points of an unremarkable kids-in-crisis novel, but Porter raises it to distinction. It's lifted through the image-rich free-verse narration of the main characters; through the quiet, staunch resilience of the Loney children, which is far more convincing than the showier pluckiness of so many of their fictional counterparts; through the stories of the obstructive and supportive neighbors who form their tightly interconnected community; and through the protective presence of Margaret and George, who intervene when they can as benevolent poltergeists on their children's behalf. The supernatural element, both playful and poignant, functions more as magical realism than ghost-story subplotting. Margaret is still the no-nonsense captain of the clan, but George finally manages in his incorporeal state to grow the backbone he never had in life as he shepherds Ran out of Germany and into the tenuous safety of the French Resistance. True to its genre, the novel awards happy endings all around, but the Loneys' journey from abandonment and crushing poverty into a promising future is fairly won.