Greg Randall's Life's Tender Return opens in 1934. Trixie (Phillips) Harris is furious that after twenty-four years, her husband of Group of Seven notoriety has left her and their three children to marry Bess (née) Larkin, the wife of his friend F.B. Housser. Derided as the lesser partner in a marriage of unequals, Trixie has been spurned by her contemporaries and art historians alike. Greg Randall portrays this woman consigned to the shadows as a complex, nuanced person who has been more sinned against than sinning. History has not been kind to her.
Life's Tender Return flashes back to Lawren Harris's childhood, life in Berlin as an art student and camel rider through Palestine, and as an illustrator for a series of stories Norman Duncan wrote for Harper's magazine. Easy to gloss over, these crucial events in Harris's development as an artist are brought to life through Greg Randall's use of story.
Women have voices in Life's Tender Return. They include Trixie, Doris (Huestis) Mills, Bess, Yvonne (McKague) Housser, Annie (Stewart Harris) Raynalds, and Emily Carr. Lawren's is not the only story worth telling.
Life's Tender Return is carefully researched, but veers into imagination when story telling warrants it. It is meant to engage readers and start conversations, not end them. Truth is for the telling. Story is everything.
