Phyllis Brett Young's novels now available

Smoke Lake resident, Valerie Young Argue's mother, Phyllis Brett Young(1914-1996), was in the 1960's one of Canada's leading novelists, writing six works of non-fiction to great acclaim. Algonquin Park Heritage is pleased to now make available to Algonquin Park lovers, two of her international best-selling books The Torontonians and Psyche that have been reprinted by McGill-Queen's University Press.

The Torontonians tells the story of how a desperate housewife and her husband renovate a house in the Toronto suburbs then finds herself with everything she'd dreamed of but lacks the happiness she expected. By depicting the uneasy coexistence of four resident populations, Young's bestselling novel touches on consumerism, materialism, the cultural divide between Toronto's city core and its suburbs, and the problems facing living a suburban life - issues that are just as relevant today as they were when originally written 50 years ago.

Psyche, on the other hand, tells the story of a small child who is kidnapped from her life in the Toronto suburbs and grows up in the hostile hills of northern Ontario. Not only does it capture the anguish and powerlessness of the girl's weathy urban mother, but it also provides insight into the abandoned child's remarkable resilience as she finds herself through art, education and psychology.