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Winter’s Descent

Don Gutteridge

Coming soon

Gutteridge’s “Winter’s Descent” takes up where “Summer’s Idyll” left off. 1945. Will and his mother have moved to a new town. Will has started to make new friends, but the desire to go back and live in his old house is stronger than ever. With his parents drifting apart, he has no way of knowing what will become of his desire. Narrated in Will’s voice, this dreamy, atmospheric story skillfully explores adolescent angst, familial ties, friendship, loneliness, trauma, bullying, and how change is hard but life goes on. The story is peppered with superbly observed characters, including the cautious Ruth, who, despite her determination to start afresh, is finding it hard to stop loving her husband; the stiff and relentless Miss Neilson, who tries to do her absolute best as the only teacher in the single-room rural schoolhouse; the bookish Effie; and a horde of other people, both adult and children Will encounters, as he struggles to deal with his loneliness and adjust to his new surroundings, forms new friendships, becomes aware of his boyhood yearnings, falls in love with words, learns to write, and finally makes a kind of peace with his parents’ broken marriage. Gutteridge’s writing is expert, and he shapes his simple premise into a captivating story of the WWII era’s Canada where industrialization was on peak and the general masses were gradually emerging from the service and trauma of the war. A solid coming-of-age story that should appeal to a large, general audience.

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