The tale of a Second World War British war bride and her infant son as they journey into unknown Canada, published by Airdrie resident, Rebekah Allen, is now available for people to listen to via Audible.
Roughly 75 years after Eileen MacDonald started writing her work of fiction in the 1940s, her granddaughter, Allen, finally published it in 2017. "Promise in the Void" tells the story of Helen, a war bride fighting to make a life on the Canadian prairies in the aftermath of the Second World War.
Many aspects of the story parallel MacDonald’s own life journey as an immigrant to Canada, Allen said. While MacDonald was never able to see the book published in her own life, Allen is proud to share her late grandmother’s story.
“It means a lot to me; it reconnected me with the matriarch in my family,” Allen said. “Going through it and connecting with my grandmother's viewpoint really solidified connections for me and my family, and kind of the journey of it helped me think about my grandmother's life better.”
MacDonald was born in India while her father was stationed there with the British military and moved back to Ireland when she was 12-years-old. After her mother passed away, she decided to trek across the Atlantic ocean to Canada in 1933, at just 17 years old.
After arriving in Canada where she knew nobody, MacDonald travelled across the country to Alberta where she found a family to live with, and worked at the Great Western Garment Company (GWG).
In many ways, her life experiences are reflected in the fictional story within "Promise in the Void," Allen said.
“It does read like a memoir, even though it is fiction,” she said. “[My grandmother] was just a very industrious verbal person who worked out all her experiences through writing.”
While her grandmother wasn’t a war bride, she watched many arrive in Alberta, and could relate to them trying to make a home in a foreign country.
“There were [over] 40,000 war brides that came to Canada around the ending years of the Second World War,” Allen said. “Anywhere between 1944 to 1947 there were 48,000 war brides.”
MacDonald noticed similar patterns in her own marriage as what war brides were experiencing. She married an Albertan cowboy-turned-preacher, and lived in the Peace River Country.
“The shock of how different things were on the prairies, how different Canada was from the UK, and just not having any conveniences in homesteading,” Allen said.
MacDonald went on to have four children, but life was difficult and she used writing her book as her escape.
“She eventually left my grandfather shortly after she had finished writing the story, and she pretty much only took a typewriter with her and moved with her two daughters and left the two sons with their dad,” Allen explained. She moved to Vancouver and worked two jobs, eventually making her way to Creston where life was less expensive and easier going. That’s where she met her second husband and lived out her life.
She never let barriers get in her way, Allen said: She loved Canada, the opportunities it had, the geography it provided, the people along the way, and was fascinated by the story she wrote.
Over the years, MacDonald attempted to find ways to share her book while continuing to write poetry and newspaper articles. She set down her original handwritten manuscript on her typewriter, which was later put on old-fashioned floppy disks by a retired high school principal.
When she handed the manuscripts to Allen in 1997, Allen was able to transfer it to digital drives.
Allen admitted she initially expected to read a quaint story from her grandmother.
“I was really amazed at how moving it was, how well written it was, how much character development there was, and the plot was fascinating,” Allen said. “It sounded like historical fiction, really close to what could have happened.”
Friends and family encouraged her to publish the story, but over the next 20 years she found little time to work on the project between her long work hours and busy life. Eventually, together with the help of a relative, a professional editor, they combed through the pages eight times to finish editing the book.
“As tedious as that sounds, it was amazing,” Allen said. “It was such a great learning experience for me to do one round on grammar, one on spelling, one round making sure the geography makes sense, one round on language use and stuff we debated over…”
The book is still 95 per cent the same as when Allen received the manuscript from her grandmother, she confirmed. She had over 500 copies made of the book and sold most at Christmas craft fairs.
Allen said the project helped boost her confidence in her own writing, and spurred on an interest to keep learning.
After someone with experience volunteered to record the book, it was recently accepted by Audible.
To listen to "Promise in the Void," search for it on Audible now.
