Seeds in the Wind: book review

Book Review: SEEDS IN THE WIND by Doris Fleming: fiction, 2012)

Lizzie Van Ankum is a seventeen-year-old Canadian farm girl in Didsbury, Alberta, eagerly anticipating entry into nursing school in Calgary. We meet her as she arrives home, summoned back by an urgent letter from the family doctor. Her mother, Sarah, has been diagnosed as having cancer of her liver, and the family is in crisis. Zachariah, the father, is spending most of his time at his wife's bedside, leaving the farm chores to his older two boys, Willie and J.C. The younger children, twelve-year-old Jake, and Rosie, seven, and Anna, five, are at loose ends.

It is Dr. Martin who meets Lizzie at the railroad station, but who says very little during the eight mile ride to the farm through a blizzard. He wants her to see her mother before he tells her the bad news; Sarah has asked him to give her family the plain truth—Advanced stage, untreatable; she is dying.

She can't die—she is the one who holds our family together! is Lizzie's desperate attempt to deny reality. She looks at her father, who has lapsed into his native Dutch language. At her younger siblings: who will take care of them? And the stark truth hits her, If she dies, I'm trapped. I'll never get off this farm, never be a nurse.

Things get worse. Father hardly speaks at all; eats little. Spends most of his time at the bedside of the woman he loves, or staying up late at night in the barn workshop, alone, building a casket. But Sarah has quietly told him, she wants Lizzie to eventually go to nursing school, and meanwhile to be her own nurse, under the guidance of Dr. Martin's visiting nurse, Nadine. And Sarah insists that Lizzie return now to spend a day at nursing school making rounds with the nurses and doctors.

Lizzie visits nursing school, thrilled not only with her contact with the profession of her dreams, but also by a chance meeting with a young man, Daniel Winslow, whose listening ear and encouragement make her hope to see more of him.

Her mother's death comes soon. Neighbors and fellow church members gather in the rain for her funeral, bringing food to the family. Father Zachariah stays outside, his hand holding onto his wife's casket. Oldest son Willie notices, and comes back to gently pry his father's fingers loose and lead him into the house, where the guests have gathered.

As the days go by, Willie and J.C. take over the the dairy chores and the milk route; Lizzie gradually come to manage the house and meals and the younger children, wondering daily how her mother ever managed all of it. Twelve-year old Jake defies his sister, only five years older than he, and spends more and more time at a neighbor's house. Father rarely come out of his bedroom, eating little, saying even less, and angry at God.

It's early summer now. The two younger sisters, Rosie and Anna are learning to help with the chickens' eggs, and keeping the kitchen stove supplied from the woodpile. Zachariah finally begins to emerge from his prolonged depression, hastened by Lizzie's warning that the neighborhood gossip, self-centered Widow Foster, is asking about him and intends to come over and visit. He vows to be too busy if she comes, and starts paying attention now to the cows and the fence lines.

Another neighbor has concerns of a different sort. Rebecca Bannister has recently moved into the farm she inherited from her late husband. Mother of two pre-teen children, she has met none of the Van Ankums except young Jake, who has offered his services as a hired hand. Not accustomed to farm life herself, she has welcomed his offer, but is now concerned about his longer stays overnight in the barn. She meets Lizzie in church one Sunday, and the two of them agree to coffee at each others' homes some time soon. 

Zachariah has an unfortunate first encounter with Rebecca when she drops in expecting to find Lizzie at home. He is enraged to learn, a few days later, that Jake has practically moved into her house, and he stomps over to her farm to confront her. She has realized, in talking to Jake that he bitterly misses his mother, and resents his father's perpetual anger, and it is she who points out that his reaction to his wife's death is separating him from his son's needs. She turns Zachariah's life around, healing his estrangement from his family.

The healing in the Van Ankum family also changes Lizzie's life when her father and siblings recognize what she has given up in taking on her mother's role. A visit in their home from a traveling minister, Brother Lemont, intrigues her when, after he talks with her brother Willie about his hopes to move north to the new communities in Alberta, he turns to her. “There's someone I want you to meet, Lizzie. Someone who may be able to persuade you to come up north to learn your nursing. They'll be in church tomorrow,” he said, “Don't miss it.”

Author Doris Fleming lives in Wallace, Idaho.