12 h 56 minAudiobook15 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 12 h 56 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
Far from towns and courts, what holds people together when weather, distance, and their own hearts put them to the test?
In Northern Lights, Gilbert Parker brings you to a Canadian frontier of rivers, forests, trading posts, and long winters. These short adventure tales follow people who live far from help. The land shapes their choices, while love and duty pull at hearts already tested by distance.
Loyalty sits at the centre of this world. With few laws and few neighbours, a person's word becomes a form of order. Parker's frontier is vivid and romantic: feelings run strong, comfort matters less than loyalty, and love meets a world that stands in its way.
What you’ll discover
- A land that tests Enter great northern spaces where distance from help gives every choice a sharper edge.
- The weight of loyalty Explore what a person's word means where laws and neighbours are few.
- Love against distance Follow strong feelings as duty and the demands of frontier life stand against them.
- A romantic frontier See the Canadian North through Parker's vivid, romantic vision of the country he leaves behind.
- A stubborn wild spirit Meet people whose hearts face tests as demanding as the weather around them.
Who will love it
Readers who love frontier adventure, brave women, mounted police, snowbound trails and short stories with strong endings. A good fit for anyone drawn to the Canadian West and quick tales of loyalty and love.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A trader's wife and a smuggler's courtship
- Two nights of choices in frost and mountain
- Two women bound by a deadline and a name
- A wager on a husband's will
- An old man on a hill and a widow at the door
- A cell, a river and a town that wants a miracle
- Five stories of nerve, pride and a pair of dice
- What the stories say about debts and promises
- How Parker tells his tales
Who’s who
- Jenny LongA mountain girl, sure with a canoe, who must choose between her wedding day and a stranger's desperate need.
- Terry O'RyanA good-humored rancher and racer, the best rider in the border country, who is teased by the whole West and wants to win Molly Mackinder.
- Sally SeabrookA dazzling Washington favorite who gives up her world to marry a drunkard and help him become the man she believes he can be.
- MitiahweA young Blackfoot wife who loves her white trader husband and fights with every resource she has to keep him.
- Pauline RentonA proud, educated girl of mixed blood who wants to be accepted as white and will take nothing as charity.
- Cassy MavorA red-haired stage entertainer, weak in health and poor in money, who comes West to give her son a home with his grandfather.
- Loisette AlroydA strong prairie girl, raised alone, carrying a bitter grief for her sister and facing a hard choice on a winter night.
- Sergeant FoyleA respected Mounted Police sergeant who gives up his badge over one mistake and meets a girl he has not seen in ten years.
Formats and delivery
- eBook
- On your phone, tablet, computer or Kindle, with the type as large as you like.
- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 12 h 56 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 15 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Read and hear Northern Lights in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Northern Lights
by Gilbert Parker · 1909
Jenny Long paddles a stranger through the Dog Nose Rapids at night while her wedding waits.
Medium level10–20 hours to read25 languages
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In short
Northern Lights is a collection of seventeen stories by Gilbert Parker, a Canadian-born writer who spent much of his working life in England. The tales are set on the Canadian prairies, in the mountains and across the far North, in the years when the buffalo were nearly gone, the railway was coming and the Mounted Police rode out in red coats.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A trader's wife and a smuggler's courtship
The book opens with A Lodge in the Wilderness. Mitiahwe, a young Blackfoot wife, lives in a fine lodge near a trading post on the Koonee River. Her husband is Dingan, a fair-haired trader the Indians call Long Hand. They have been together four years, with no priest or paper between them, and no child.
One bright autumn morning her mother, Swift Wing, speaks of a dream of a dark winter. Then Breaking Rock, the chief's son who has long watched the lodge from a distance, arrives with news. The last boat of the year leaves at dawn, and he says Dingan will be on it. Mitiahwe creeps to the shop at dusk and listens at a crack in the door.
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What is Northern Lights by Gilbert Parker about?
It is a collection of seventeen stories set on the Canadian prairies, in the mountains and in the far North. They follow traders, smugglers, police, missionaries and women of courage as the old frontier meets the railway and the law.
Where and when are the stories set?
The tales take place in the Canadian West and North during the late nineteenth century, when the buffalo were vanishing, the Mounted Police were arriving and railways were opening new towns. Places include Athabasca, the Saskatchewan Valley and the town of Jansen.
Are the stories based on true events?
They are works of fiction, though Parker draws on the real setting and the real figures of the age, such as Mounted Police, Hudson's Bay Company factors and Indian chiefs. Sir John Franklin's lost Arctic expedition appears as part of the background.
The author
Gilbert Parker
1862–1932 · Canadian novelist
Gilbert Parker (1862–1932) was a Canadian novelist and British politician. He was born in Ontario and later lived in England. He wrote The Battle of the Strong, published in 1898, and Northern Lights, published in 1909. He represented Gravesend in the British Parliament from 1900 to 1918.
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