Product Description

No Crystal Stair is an absorbing novel that explores an increasingly difficult contemporary reality: functioning as though White while surviving as Black.Marion Willow, a proud young widow, must work at two jobs to ensure that her three girls develop lifestyles not hindered by class and colour. The bittersweet experience of Marion's elegant American expatriate neighbour, Torrie Delacourt, could help the girls survive Canada's subtle racism, which, though not legislated, wounds and herns them in. But the women's rivalry for the love of Edmund Thompson, a handsome railway porter, pits them against one another.With humour and sensitivity, No Crystal Stair reveals both the conflict and the human heart of the proud, tightly knit Black community of the Little Burgundy district of Quebec in the mid-forties. It recaptures the days when Montreal was a cosmopolitan hub. It was a city inhabited by jazz musicians, cafe society, artists, gangsters - those whose world revolved around Rockhead's Paradise - and others who clung to the community church at the end of prohibition, the depression and the anxious years of World War II.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #284017 in Books
• Published on: 2004-11-18
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 247 pages

From School Library Journal

YA--Set in a black community in Quebec during the 1940s, this is a sensitive and heartwarming tale of a courageous woman making her way in a world that does not recognize her diversity or culture. Marion Willow, widowed with three girls, works two jobs to provide for them. Upright and self-sufficient, she is determined that her children will grow up to be dignified and educated despite the difficulties of being black. Marion is surrounded by a supportive community, including Edmond Thompson, a longtime friend of her deceased husband who is trained as a chemist but works as a railroad porter because of segregation. Young Otis, Edmond's nephew, also finds himself faced with limited opportunities because of class and color. He and his co-worker from the states ease their pain by frequenting the jazz clubs that feature many Harlem artists. YAs will be engrossed in the subplots due to the well-developed characters and the predicaments that shape their destiny. Emily, adopted at age 13, is a mulatto orphan. Faced with abandonment, sickle cell anemia, and no stability, she is welcomed with openness and security by her new sisters, 12-year-old Pippa and 8-year-old Effie. Readers will find these characters convincing and will enjoy watching them mature. A fresh and original story of the black experience in Canada.

Connie Freeman, Allen County Public Library, Fort Wayne, IN

Copyright 1997 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Review
"No Crystal Stair has all the ingredients for an incredibly powerful, yet wistful, film, exposing as it does the inner strength of Black women, pitted against the pressure to submerge their cultural colours for Caucasian acceptance."

About the Author
Mairuth Sarsfield was born and bred in Montreal and has lived in New York, East and West Africa, Washington DC, Papua, New Guinea, and Japan. She is the recipient of the Chevalier de l'ordre national du Quebec, and was honoured in Cleveland, Ohio with a "Mairuth Sarsfield Day". Mairuth worked as a Foreign Service Officer; as a communications expert on global information themes for the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi; and served on the board of directors of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for many years. Retired, Mairuth now lives on Vancouver Island with her husband Dominic.