Clara Callan

Winner of the 2001 Governor General’s Award and Giller Prize, Clara Callan chronicles the lives of two sisters living in a small Ontario town during the Depression. Author Richard Wright tells their story, from the ordinary to the extraordinary, with an eye for the commonplace and poignant sense of the larger undercurrents that change people’s lives. Letters and journal entries form a portal into the desires and passions of two very different women, underscoring the larger tableau of an era stirring with great events — the Depression, the rumblings of another world war, and the infancy of radio and show business entertainment. Love and betrayal, friendship and family, hope and deception are the forces that temper the lives of Clara, the spinster schoolteacher, and her sister Nora, “whose entire life is a performance.” A master at revealing the drama of seemingly unremarkable lives, Richard B. Wright constructs a powerful, mesmerizing narrative performed by Jennifer and Cynthia Dale, with supporting roles performed by Janet Wright and Tom McBeath. In this mesmerizing performance, the Dale sisters create a deeply moving portrait of two women and the social changes that will alter their inner lives and the world as they once knew it.

“Simultaneously a sharp character study, a chronicle of the early years of the radio biz, and a portrait of a world numbed by the Depression and poised to wage a world war.” — BookLoons