The Devil is Innocent

By H. Gordon Green
Publisher: Les Presses de l'Université d'Ottawa/University of Ottawa Press
Paperback : 9780887721847, 264 pages, June 1986
Hardcover : 9780887721854, 261 pages, June 1986
Paperback : 9780776636139, 264 pages, June 2023

Table of contents

Chapter One: The old swimming hole
Chapter Two: The revival meeting
Chapter Three: The Bible, the strap and the Daily Register
Chapter Four: Jeannie
Chapter Five: Old Doug
Chapter Six: The queer ones
Chapter Seven: Dr. Gilbert Garfield
Chapter Eight: The devil is rampant in Mountford!
Chapter Nine: Onward Christian soldiers
Chapter Ten: Pete
Chapter Eleven: The mills of God
Epilogue

Description

The Devil is Innocent is a robust work of humor depicting life in a rural Ontario community in the 1930s. It is about growing up and discovering the facts of life, love, belief, and local tyranny. The cast of characters -- iconoclastic, earthly, outcast, generous and grasping -- are gathered in fabulous Mountford. The little town is recreated vividly: from school, revival meeting, swimming hole and frozen skating river, to field, forest, livery stable and drug store. In keeping with time place and person, the language and limericks are fresh and uninhibited. There is male chauvinism, as well as surprising anticipation of modern feminism. The reader will have a difficult time deciding how much of this book is fiction and how much of it is autobiography. Published in English.