A Far Away Place, Bear River (Mary Marvin McLeod, 1920-2003) is the story of Maple Grove farm, the first volume of a panoramic Canadian trilogy that takes us from a farming community in the 1920s, to a small town during the Depression, to Ottawa and Montreal during the war years. More than a memoir, it is a history of the times, stitching together a series of tales and vignettes about the people and places Mary sees along the way. Underlying it all is an eldest daughter's recounting of her parents' tragic fate as Mary finds herself following a similar path, tangled in "the strange mathematics...