A Sudden Sun Read Online Free PDF

imagine. Nothing is. If you don’t want to go on teaching you can help me here at home, but I don’t want to hear anymore foolish talk about nursing.”
    Lily’s needle pierced the thin cotton stretched over her embroidery hoop: the red thread of the roses she was embroidering looked like drops of blood on the white cloth. Her attention to her work was meant to signal the argument was done. Grace turned for the door, ignoring her own bag of work, which contained yet another pair of sturdy military socks.
    “Where are you going?”
    “Up to the church to see the Reverend.”
    “It’ll do you no good. We’ve discussed this. He and I are in agreement. Don’t think you can go behind my back and get a soft answer out of him.”
    Grace knew this was true. She had talked with her father last night but the Reverend was no good if Lily got to him first. He toed the party line and said that nursing was too difficult and dangerous. Anyway it was a lie. She wasn’t going to the church. Outside, in the clear summer air, she felt better as soon as she started walking over the road to Catalina South.
    A year ago, the south side of Catalina Harbour had been a quiet, grass-grown spot, empty of houses, stores, or stages. But then William Coaker, head of the Fisherman’s Union, had bought up most of the land on that side of the harbour. Fishing and the war occupied the minds of most Newfoundlanders this summer of 1917, but here in Catalina there was another obsession and anothersource of paid work: Mr. Coaker was building a model town. He had built himself a new home and a headquarters for his Fisherman’s Protective Union; now, a Union store, a fish plant, row houses for the workers were under construction. Every time Grace walked down by the harbour she could hear the ringing of hammer and axe.
    Her father was a great admirer of Coaker’s work and since the man himself had landed almost on their doorstep, Reverend Collins was found over at Coaker’s premises nearly as often as he was in his own church. Port Union, as Mr. Coaker was trying to get people into the habit of calling it, would have electric lights and every modern convenience. It would be the finest town in Newfoundland because, as Reverend Collins explained to Grace, instead of being built like every other town in the world—for the rich to become richer—Port Union was being built from the ground up by the workers themselves, for fishermen and their families to have all the blessings a new century could bestow.
    Even the war was supposed to be only a temporary interruption in the grand plan—young men like Charley were meant to go away, fight for King and country, then come home to build the new world that would rise from the ashes of the old. And even with Charley gone, buried somewhere in France, Grace felt a little of that old excitement pushing through her loss, like the buds that were just beginning to open on the trees. This was where she belonged—in a new world, a new century, of action and serious work. Even if her mother was determined to try to keep her in the last century, dutifully sitting at home knitting socks or embroidering pillowcases.
    Jack Perry was going overseas: Grace had promised him she would write. But she was determined to be more than the girl at home writing letters to a soldier. Perhaps she could get Grandfather and Aunt Daisy to invite her on an extended visit to St. John’s. Grace and Charley had both lived with their grandfather and his secondwife while they were at school in St. John’s; Grace liked her cheerful step-grandmother, who preferred to be called “Aunt Daisy” and who softened the edges of Grandfather’s austere house. Perhaps, if Grace came to visit with her own hard-earned savings in her hand, Grandfather and Daisy would overrule her parents, let her train for the VAD after all. If she could get to St. John’s anything was possible. Port Union was a stepping stone.
    Her father was not at the FPU headquarters