Helen Humphreys

A brilliant and touching memoir about the dreams and desires passed down through three generations of a family, from the beloved and decorated writer of The Ghost Orchard, Rabbit Foot Bill and Nocturne

In March of 1941, Helen Humphreys’s grandfather, Dudley, disappeared near the island of Malta. He was travelling with a crew on a Wellington bomber to the island, where he would take command of the RAF station. At 5:45 a.m. the pilot of the Wellington sent out a radio call to say that he was under attack, and then there was nothing further. No trace of the plane, or of any of the seven men aboard, was ever found.

The loss of this husband and father would reverberate through the family for years, cutting short Dudley’s dream to return from Britain to the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia to start an orchard in the place where he spent his adolescence. Decades on, the son who was left behind, Helen’s father, would partially realize that dream and move his family to Canada. And even more years on, a family member would discover a cache of short stories written by Dudley about his experiences in the trenches in World War I and share them with Helen. She knew that the grandfather she never met had wanted to be a writer but had not expected that any of his stories had survived.

Weaving in memory, reconstructed family history and her grandfather’s stories, Helen Humphreys explores the nature of inherited dreams within a family. Do dreams and desires pass through DNA like a physical trait, from one generation to the next and the next after that? What continues? And how does it continue?

Beautifully written, full of curiosity and emotional reckonings, Summerland reminds us why Helen Humphreys is one of Canada’s most admired and accomplished writers.