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Like its predecessor, that great & good seller Death Comes for the Archbishop, Shadows on the Rock is concerned with the American scene, colonial times. But Authoress Cather has moved from Spanish Southwest to French Northeast: the rock her story shadows is Quebec, at the turn of 1700. If you expect to encounter shades of Wolfe and Montcalm, of the storming of the Plains of Abraham, you will be disappointed; the story does not move that far (Quebec fell in 1759). There is not so much as an Indian fight and even the deeds of pioneering derring do are all messengered action. Explorers Daniel du Lhut, Robert Cavelier de la Salle are mentioned, but they are only names. Heroine of this quiet tale of a quiet time is a little girl, Cécile Auclair, and nothing happens to her except that she and her apothecary father do not return to France after all.
Papa Auclair, family apothecary to the Frontenacs in France, followed his patron to the New World when Frontenac was made Governor General of New France. In Quebec he lived as far as possible the quiet bourgeois life he had known at home. A philosopher, Papa Auclair believed in good manners, good cooking; well-behaved Cécile adored him, cooked beautifully. She liked Quebec and its people, made friends with many of them: courtly and disgruntled old Frontenac; grim old Bishop Laval; cross-eyed Blinker, ex-torturer from the King's prison at Rouen; Pierre Charron, coureur de bois; little Jacques, accidental son of a sleazy, sailor-loving woman; Father Hector, dilettante by nature, missionary by vocation. Once a year the boats from France came in, bringing letters and supplies from home; missionaries and trappers came from the wilderness with tall and terrible tales, but in Quebec itself nothing much happened except the change of seasons, the slow passage of time. Weary old Frontenac expected his King would recall him, let him die in France; the Auclairs were to accompany him home. But the King sent no summons. Death came for the Governor General in his draughty Canadian mansion; Papa Auclair resigned himself to Quebec, and Daughter Cécile married Trapper Pierre.
It does not sound very promising, perhaps. But Authoress Cather is better than her implicit word: if she does not hold you breathless, she never lets you nod. And when you have finished her unspectacular narrative you may be somewhat surprised to realize that you have been living human history. Willa Cather's Northeast passages are never purple. Captious critics might complain that she sometimes simplifies too far, that her people are sometimes so one-sided as to be simply silly, that she sometimes, for one who can write like an angel, gives a fair imitation of poor Poll: "When Pierre had made a landing and tied his boat, they went up the path to the smith's house, to find the family at dinner. They were warmly received and seated at the dinnertable. The smith had no son, but four little girls. After dinner Cécile went off into the fields with them to pick wild strawberries. She had never seen so many wild flowers before."