The Friends of Meager Fortune

By David Adams Richards

Book Overview

Growing up in a prominent lumber family in the Miramichi, brothers Will and Owen Jameson know little of the world beyond their town and the great men who work the forest, including their father. But as young men, the boys couldn't be more different -- where seventeen-year-old Will is headstrong and rugged, able to hold his own in the woods or in a fight, Owen, three years his junior, is literary and sensitive. What worries their mother Mary, however, is the prophecy told to her by a local woman upon Will's birth: "that her first-born would be a powerful man and have much respect -- but his brother would be even greater, yet destroy the legacy by rashness, and the Jameson dynasty [would] not go beyond that second boy." She tries to laugh it off, but the prophecy becomes a part of local legend and hangs over the heads of the boys like a dark cloud.

When their father dies in a freak accident and the management of the Jameson tracts and company falters, Will, as the true inheritor of his father' s "shrewd mind and fists to match," quits school to take over. He's a strong leader of men, but perhaps too strong at times, and dies while clearing a log jam during a run. Reggie Glidden, Will's best friend and the Push of the Jameson team, takes Owen under his wing, searching for any small sign that the younger boy has his brother' s qualities. But Owen knows his limitations and, after his brother's death and then rejection by the girl of his dreams, Lula Brower, he joins the army and heads off to war hoping to get himself killed. Instead, he returns a decorated war hero.

Then he falls in love with the beautiful, childlike Camellia -- the wife of Reggie Glidden -- and soon Owen and Camellia find themselves watched on all sides, caught in the teeth of an entire town's gossip and hypocrisy despite the innocence of their relationship. But for the community, it's as if taking Owen Jameson -- and therefore the whole Jameson family -- down a peg or two will give them control over their changing world. Inexorably, Owen and Camellia are pulled into a chain of events that will end with death, disappearance, and a sensational trial.

At the same time, realizing his destiny, Owen takes over the family business and begins what will become the greatest cut in New Brunswick history, his men setting up camp on the notoriously dangerous Good Friday Mountain. The teamsters spend months in fierce ice and snow, daily pitting themselves against nature and risking their lives for scant reward, in the last moments before the coming of mechanization that will make them obsolete. This heroic, brutal life is all Meager Fortune, the camp keeper, knows. A good and innocent man, he shows unexpected resolution in the face of the betrayals of the more worldly men around him.

With The Friends of Meager Fortune, award-winning author David Adams Richards continues his exploration of New Brunswick's Miramichi Valley, both the hard lives and experiences that emerge from that particular soil and the universal human matters that concern us all: the work of the hands and the heart; the nature of true greatness and true weakness; the relentlessness of fate and the good and evil that men and women do. It is a devastating portrait of a society, but it is also a brilliant commemoration of the passing of a world -- one that cements David Adams Richards' place as the finest novelist at work in Canada today.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385660952
• ISBN13: 9780385660952
• Release Date: July 2007
• Publisher: Anchor Canada
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

The Friends of Meager Fortune

David Adams Richards has done a terrific job of describing the mid-twentieth century Canadian lumber industry. He has provided the reader with a wonderful cast of characters who are all affected by a vicious rumor. I wanted to reach inside the book and shake the characters, who not only believed the rumor, but did nothing to find the truth. Two soldiers become involved with a woman married to one, but attracted to the hero. When her husband disappears, the rumor spreads through the small town. In the meantime, the logging goes on, the loggers endure the treacherous terrain to get the logs to the river, the valiant horses perform their duties, and the Canadian winter provides unbearably harsh conditions for the loggers. The story includes a faux murder that gets tied into the original rumor, the hero of the story is accused of the murder on the basis of the discovery of a mutilated and unidentified body. All the while, Meager Fortune, who does not appear until well into the story, is taking care of the loggers on the mountain. He is the one who discovers the betrayal of one of the loggers who is tagging the logs with a competitor's stamp. But he does not report this betrayal. In the end, the hero dies an heroic death, and the long-lost husband reappears, putting an end to the long-running rumor that had virtually destroyed reputations and resulted in the conviction of an innocent man for the death of another man, who never died. This book was so well written. The characters were well described, and I (and I hope other readers) was able to empathize with the rumor victims. I cried real tears when Owen died, breathed a sigh of relief when Reggie reappeared, and wanted to give Meager Fortune a hug for his undying dedication to his logging buddies. Kudos, Mr. Richards. I loved your book.

"A man like many here would not live in the world to come."

Mid-twentieth century Canada is a time of vast change in the lumber industry, although few can see the decline of the old ways that looms on the horizon, massive amounts of timber moved by the grueling labor of men who have defined their lives in the felling and harvesting of trees. Will Jameson, who takes over his family's business upon the death of his father, is only sixteen when he achieves the status of legend. But Will's untimely death, though prophesied by a palm-reader, throws younger brother Owen into the breech, Owen forever fighting the long shadow of his more accomplished and manly sibling. Even though he has returned from the war a hero, Owen cannot measure up in the eyes of the town. It is never Owen's intent to save his family's fortune, but he feels obligated to aid his widowed mother, the stoic and gullible Mary. Owen's problems emerge through the power of gossip and innuendo. His war hero status deteriorates as the town whispers of his obsession with Camellia, wife of Reggie Glidden, Will's best friend. Undeniably attracted to Camellia, Owen's affection remains innocent, Camellia the unwary manipulator of the situation as she encourages Owen to take over the company and help her locate the now-missing Reggie. Soon the rumors reach a deafening roar; with Reggie's mysterious disappearance, it is assumed that the couple has done away with the man who stands in their way. That this is mere supposition carries no weight in the world of public opinion, especially when a story is circulated by Lula Brower, a vain young woman set to appropriate Owen for her fiancé until felled by a stroke that alters her fortune as a marriageable woman. Meanwhile, Own throws himself into the lumber business, desperately harvesting the timber in one of the most dangerous areas of growth, his men held barely in check with their internal feuding and petty grievances. While some, like Meager Fortune, remain loyal to Owen, others allow themselves to be seduced by Owen's rivals, further complicating an already dangerous endeavor to save the Jameson's interests. When an unidentified body is found floating in the river, despite the fact that it is too decayed to be recognizable, the town assumes the worst, pointing the finger of guilt at the suspected miscreants, Owen and Camellia. As the industry is doomed in its present incarnation, so too are the innocent lovers, tried by public opinion, rumors flying from mouth to mouth in lieu of facts with amazing speed. The locals gather gossip, embellishing it at will, passing it along to strangers until no semblance of the truth remains, the town seething with rancor at an assumed crime. In a rapidly changing century, where mechanization is on the rise, this sad drama plays out against the majesty of the great wooded forests providing sustenance for families who spend their time spilling lies to alleviate their uncertainty. Seen through the telescope of time, the history of an era is rendered insignificant compared