Shadows on the Rock

This tale was published in 1931. Willa Cather's Shadows on the Rock tells the tale of a young girl, her widower father, and their friends, all of them working to make a life for themselves in Quebec in 1697.

“Shadows on the Rock” is a historical novel which takes place between 1697 and 1713 in Quebec. For a number of years after the French first settled Quebec, it was an isolated, rocky settlement where many of the inhabitants struggled to survive in the harsh climate.

The people tightly clung to the Catholic Church’s interpretation of events and distrusted anyone who differed in this world-view. Frequent prayer and church services were the rule.

Chapter I

One afternoon late in October of the year 1697, Euclide Auclair, the philosopher apothecary of Quebec, stood on the top of Cap Diamant gazing down the broad, empty river far beneath him. Empty, because an hour ago the flash of retreating sails had disappeared behind the green island that splits the St. Lawrence below Quebec, and the last of the summer ships from France had started on her long voyage home.