Pressing on to Write the Next Book

Norma is a young girl, living in Northern Alberta, in a small town. Her father owns a hardware store. She has an older brother, who is so perfect that he is an irritant to her.

Norma works for her board in town, so that she can go to school. Normas hates her life, finds the small-town stifling and depressing. To her, it appears that nothing happens in her town. There are no possibilities, no way to move forward.

She has done well in high school and wonders why she made such an effort to excel. She has few options; get married to a farmer or move to the nearest city and get a job as a receptionist or office clerk.

She hears how the woman she boards with gossips with her friends and how they show discrimination and small mindedness. It bothers her that they have no respect for hard working women like her mother.

She decides to leave and make her life elsewhere, where she hopes people would have different values. She cashes in her modest education fund and leaves for Edmonton, where she plans look for a job. She has one good friend, Doreen, who wants to go with her but can’t.

She takes a bus to Edmonton, stays at the YWCA, and easily finds a job waiting on tables.  Although she is managing quite well, she is very lonely and wants to go home. She quits her job and buys a ticket for home. But she finds she just can’t give up yet, so she stays.

She finds another job in a Hudson’s Bay Department Store and finds a new living arrangement with three other girls. Things look up. Yet she is restless. She goes to the personnel department at the store to ask for a transfer to Calgary.

Norma looks for some meaning, some key to understanding herself. She settles in Calgary in an apartment and has a more interesting life. She wants to go to university, meet new people.  She writes her friend Doreen about all this. She knows she wants to become something, not be like Doreen, who stayed home, married, and had children.

The job at Hudson’s Bay has limitations. There is no room for advancement, no promotions. She goes to the employment office of the Alberta and Southern Oil and Gas Company and is hired as a receptionist. She is uncomfortable there. She is expected to dress up, wear high heels and look sophisticated. She realizes there is a lot of sexism in this job.

She spends her time walking along the deer trails surrounding the city and thinking about her life.