![]() ![]() Life in Shallow Creek becomes unbearable enough for Chris that he enlists in the army. In the face of this loss, Chris dreams instead of becoming a traveller, but in reality ends up working as a travelling salesman, foolishly optimistic that each new item is his ticket to getting rich. Chris dreams of going to college, but his financial realities make this impossible. It’s only when Vanessa visits his home years later that she realizes this world existed only in Chris’s imagination and stands in stark contrast to the hardscrabble conditions of his family’s farm. Chris enchants Vanessa with tales of his life back in Shallow Creek where he says he lived in a tree house on a sprawling ranch, with a lake once full of prehistoric creatures, and two majestic horses. As Vanessa gets to know and grow incredibly fond of Chris, she discovers the many ways he retreats into himself and his dreams to protect himself from difficult realities. ![]() Grandfather Connor is a harsh and critical man whose biting comments affect everyone in the family except, as his cousin Vanessa notes, Chris, who seems to retreat into himself where he is safe from this emotional abuse. Chris moves from his family’s struggling farm in Shallow Creek to stay with his Grandmother and Grandfather Connor in Manawaka to attend high school. ![]() Throughout “Horses of the Night,” Chris, a young man growing up in rural Canada during the Great Depression, finds refuge in his own imagined worlds that are at odds with the difficult realities of his life. ![]()
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