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Rating: 
Summary: An amazing read
Review: Pitifully few Americans are even aware of Canada's participation in World War I. Fewer still know Canada suffered horrible casualties which it honors on Rememberance Day, a deeply felt, painfully observed day of mourning.David MacFarlane's father was the only one of six brothers to survive World War I. Unlike them, he didn't go to France. One of his two sisters served as a nurse there, too. The Danger Tree traces the lives of these siblings from Newfoundland and the effects of the war on the survivors and the survivors' descendants. It is in part a memoir and in part a carefully researched work of journalism by a gifted "light" columnist for The Globe and Mail in Toronto. The ordinary deaths of these ordinary young men from a hard-working Scots family surviving in a very tough environment have found a memorial in MacFarlane's writing. But of greater significance is MacFarlane's insistance that the effects of their deaths, the effects of the First War, live today. It occurs to me that The Danger Tree is a book one should read immediately after Robert Graves' Goodby to All That. For MacFarlane adds dimensions of time and distance to the soldier's pain. MacFarlane is a fine writer, but Graves was a great one. Still, the two books sit comfortably together on my shelves. A brilliant book.
Rating:
Summary: Its Subtitle Says It All
Review: Pitifully few Americans are even aware of Canada's participation in World War I. Fewer still know Canada suffered horrible casualties which it honors on Rememberance Day, a deeply felt, painfully observed day of mourning. David MacFarlane's father was the only one of six brothers to survive World War I. Unlike them, he didn't go to France. One of his two sisters served as a nurse there, too. The Danger Tree traces the lives of these siblings from Newfoundland and the effects of the war on the survivors and the survivors' descendants. It is in part a memoir and in part a carefully researched work of journalism by a gifted "light" columnist for The Globe and Mail in Toronto. The ordinary deaths of these ordinary young men from a hard-working Scots family surviving in a very tough environment have found a memorial in MacFarlane's writing. But of greater significance is MacFarlane's insistance that the effects of their deaths, the effects of the First War, live today. It occurs to me that The Danger Tree is a book one should read immediately after Robert Graves' Goodby to All That. For MacFarlane adds dimensions of time and distance to the soldier's pain. MacFarlane is a fine writer, but Graves was a great one. Still, the two books sit comfortably together on my shelves. A brilliant book.
Rating:
Summary: Poignant and beautifully observed
Review: This is a great novel about how a war can affect a family, the family business and the province for many years after the war. Before WWI Newfoundland was a the oldest and thriving member of the British Empire (they joined Canada in 1949). When they were called to war they sent their best sons, and they sent all of them. In one battle on July 1st, the Royal Nlfd Regiment was almost completely wiped out. This has effected the economy and liveihood of the island for years. The RNR monuments of a bellowing caribou on the battlefields of France are a testiment of their valour. While the rest of Canada celebrates Canada Day on July 1st, to the Newfoundlanders it is a day of mourning and rememberance the RNR and the sacrafices they made. This book is a great testimony to the brave Newfoundlanders and their families during that time.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent overview of how WWI affected Newfoundland
Review: This is a great novel about how a war can affect a family, the family business and the province for many years after the war. Before WWI Newfoundland was a the oldest and thriving member of the British Empire (they joined Canada in 1949). When they were called to war they sent their best sons, and they sent all of them. In one battle on July 1st, the Royal Nlfd Regiment was almost completely wiped out. This has effected the economy and liveihood of the island for years. The RNR monuments of a bellowing caribou on the battlefields of France are a testiment of their valour. While the rest of Canada celebrates Canada Day on July 1st, to the Newfoundlanders it is a day of mourning and rememberance the RNR and the sacrafices they made. This book is a great testimony to the brave Newfoundlanders and their families during that time.
Rating:
Summary: An amazing read
Review: This is an amazing book: history, biography, auto-biograhy, philosphy all combined into a powerful tale of family character (and characters)that stays with you. In essence, a simple reflection on long past lives from a little corner of the world, Newfoundland, all wound up in the Great War, it becomes a haunting tour-de-force of the power of great events on everyday people. The chapter "Fire" is in itself a small masterpiece and one I find reading again and again even now two years after the first read. I picked this book up by sheer accident in a small bookstore in Banff and have been thankful for my good fortune of discovering this gem.
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