Horizon Information Portal

e-branch

Home

My Account/Renew Loans

Find Magazine Articles & more

Our lady of steerage / Steven Mayoff.

by Mayoff, Steven, 1956-

View full image

Bunim & Bannigan, c2015.

Memory -- Fiction.

Women immigrants -- Fiction.

Parental grief -- Fiction.

254 p. ; 24 cm.

"The present moment is unlike the memory of it. Remembering is not the negative of forgetting. Remembering is a form of forgetting." This quote by Milan Kundera sets the tone for the story of 19 year old Mariasse Knyszinski, who, in 1923, has run away from her home in Kraków to be with her cousin, Piotr, in Montreal. Aboard the S. S. Montmartre she meets a young Jewish couple, Shulim and Betye, who have suffered the loss of their 5 year old son. Betye's grief is such that she ignores their infant daughter, Dvorah, so Mariasse takes care of her for the duration of the voyage. The Madonna-like image of Mariasse carrying Dvorah around on the ship inspires the other 3rd class passengers to refer to her as Our Lady of Steerage. This begins a visceral connection between Mariasse and Dvorah and for the next 40 years they wander in and out of each other's lives, their relationship weathering both fierce devotion and bitter betrayals. The non-linear narrative and image-driven prose of Our Lady Of Steerage manifests the novel's chief themes: the vagaries of memory and the struggle for self-reinvention.

Canadian fiction.

Historical fiction.

Horizon Information Portal 3.24_8902M

© 2001-2013 SirsiDynix All rights reserved.

Horizon Information Portal