Tourists often passed through the little town of Weeping Bay in the Gaspé peninsula. They exclaimed from their big automobiles at the magnificent scenery, the quaint local customs, the picturesque fishermen's huts, and at the church with its gilt towers. They exclaimed too when the carnival came to town and they saw the girls in their bright, sleazy rayon dresses, the gaunt factory men and fishermen, and the worn young mothers -- 'Did you ever see such a bunch of scarecrows?'
But they did not see the real Weeping Bay. They saw Leon and Odilon, two stony-faced brothers, and said, 'In the States a couple of kids like that would be giggling with a couple of girls.' But they did not know that Leon was mourning the pitiful, unnecessary death of his young wife, and that Odilon was hiding the terrible knowledge that he had betrayed his friends. They saw Hervé Kirouac glowering as Rita, the carnival singer, aimed her intimate little song in his direction; but they did not suspect the violence of his response, nor the reason for it. Nor could they understand the separate struggles of many human beings, which reached their climax in Hervé's defiant question -- 'This Gaspé, what is wrong with it? Why do we starve?'
There is passion and violence, love and hate, and unquenchable human longing in Weeping Bay. There was also, in many people's opinion, a wrong--a wrong that could have been righted by faith in humanity, rather than by desperate clinging to a rigid creed. It is that story that Joy Davidman tells with such force and searing intensity.
