Miles to Go

Miles to Go, from Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, is an inspired title for this novel in that both poem and novel are about death. Twelve-year-old friends, Anna Lozowski and Maggie Neilson, are forced to realize that those you love the most can be abruptly taken from you. The story, set in Saskatchewan in 1948, opens when Anna confides to Maggie her worries about her mother. Mrs. Lozowski is soon to have her sixth baby, and, at the time of her last childbirth, the midwife warned her against having another.

Though the girls live in the same small town and are in the same grade at school, they come from different backgrounds. Anna, the eldest girl of five children, lives on a hard-scrabble farm far from town and buses to school. Maggie’s parents say that Anna’s father “drinks like a fish” and “barely makes a living”. Maggie, elder of two children, lives with her family in a comfortable apartment on the top floor of the local RCMP barracks, with her father’s office on the main floor and two cells in the basement.

Anna loves her mother and siblings and is helpful at home as well as excelling in school. Maggie dislikes her glasses, her short bangs, her piano lessons, her mother and her five-year-old brother, and she wonders if she’s adopted. Her mother says she’s “snippy... a spark looking for kindling.” She gets along well with her father and her paternal grandmother who lives in a nearby small town and visits often.

When her mother dies in childbirth, Anna is overwhelmed, yet determined to fulfill her promise to care for the baby. Keeping the family functioning falls almost entirely to her as the two older boys are no help, and their father has his farm work. The two preschool girls are hardly more than babies themselves. Though overworked and sad about not returning to school, Anna is loving and protective to her young siblings, especially the baby, and intent on holding the home together. When Maggie visits, she’s enchanted by the baby and wishes she could help Anna, but they live too far apart to see each other often. Then the death of Maggie’s beloved grandmother isolates her in a grief separate from Anna’s.

Adding to the grim mood is the case of a prisoner being held in one of the basement cells, a man who has killed his wife and baby. Maggie and her classmate, Jerry, try to understand how someone could do such things. Jerry’s attempts at humour, their shared smoking escapade and their bicycle rides into the countryside help Maggie come to terms with the loss of her grandmother. She reflects that she can “have adventures and laugh at things and still keep the memory of her alive inside.”

The girls alternate as first person narrators, but Anna’s sections are more compelling than Maggie’s; indeed, compared to Anna’s heroism, Maggie comes across as trivial, preoccupied with typical pre-teen issues. After a couple of minor accidents, it becomes clear that the burden on Anna is too great, and so her father puts the two little girls into foster care in town. Worse is to come; he gives up the baby for adoption by an American couple. Both girls are angry at the adults who made these arrangements, including a social worker, Anna’s father and Maggie’s dad. Readers may question Maggie’s father’s statement that “Adults have the experience to make the right decisions”, but, in time, Maggie becomes reconciled and reaches a better understanding with her parents.

In her “Author’s Note”, Beryl Young says that the book was inspired by the true story of a family that broke up after the mother’s death and eventually had a joyful reunion - sixty years later. Anna’s family tragedy overshadows Maggie’s concerns and is stronger than the story of the girls’ friendship. Since the real story led to a reunion of the siblings, the author could have used an epilogue or a flash forward to take her story a few miles further to a more upbeat conclusion. Truth is not only stranger than fiction, but it sometimes provides a better ending.