Brought to sorrow by this man, the shattered woman travels days to the one place that promises peace: the lonely Tent That Stands on the Mount of Lost Winters. "The Tent of the Purple Mat" is just one of the simple yet heartfelt stories in Parables of a Province. A man revives after a dozen years of illness and forgetfulness, to find his devoted wife laboring at the forge, in "The Forge in the Valley." An old man is called to help, again and again, an ungrateful village -- until he finally has reason to refuse, in "There Was a Little City." In these and other tales, Sir Gilbert Parker lifts the life of the northern pioneer into the realms of myth and fable.

Author Biography

Sir Horatio Gilbert George Parker (1862 - 1932), known as Gilbert Parker, Canadian novelist and British politician, was born at Camden East, Addington, Ontario, the son of Captain J. Parker, R.A. The best of his novels are those in which he first took for his subject the history and life of the French Canadians and his permanent literary reputation rests on the fine quality, descriptive and dramatic, of his Canadian stories. Pierre and his People (1892) was followed by Mrs. Falchion (1893), The Trail of the Sword (1894), When Valmond came to Pontiac (1895), An Adventurer of Icy North (1895) and The Seats of the Mighty (1896, dramatized in 1897). The Seats of the Mighty was a historical novel depicting the English conquest of Quebec with James Wolfe and the Marquis de Montcalm as two of the characters. The Lane that Had No Turning (1900), a collection of short stories set in the fictional Quebec town of Pontiac, contains some of his best work and is viewed by some as being in the tradition of such Gothic classics as Stoker's Dracula and James's The Turn of the Screw. In The Battle of the Strong (1898) he broke new ground, laying his scene in the Channel Islands. His chief later books were The Right of Way (1901), Donovan Pasha (1902), The Ladder of Swords (1904), The Weavers (1907), Northern Lights (1909) and The Judgment House (1913). Parker had three that made it into the top 10 on the annual list of bestselling novels in the United States, two of which were on it for two years in a row.