For many readers in Canada, CanLit circa 1964 is a bit of a mystery. (Outside of Canada, I imagine, CanLit circa 1964 must amount to a complete unknown.)
Future luminaries had just started out. Margaret Atwood and Michael Ondaatje hadn’t written novels yet, and Alice Munro had published individual stories but no collection; and though Robertson Davies concluded the Salterton Trilogy in 1958, the first book of the Deptford Trilogy would not appear until 1970.
Margaret Laurence did publish The Stone Angel that year. Less consciously literary and considerably more pulpy than Laurence, the Jan Hilliard novel Morgan’s Castle (written by Nova Scotia-born Torontonian Hilda Kay Grant), suggests an alternative CanLit tradition to me—our dime store authors. In the Introduction—a terrific and handy encapsulation of Grant’s life and literary output—Brian Busby calls Grant “one of the best Canadian novelists of her time,” and compares her to Phyllis Brett Young. That comparison might be apt; wholly unaware of Young, the context Busby establishes clarified little to me.
For me, a film noir fan with surface knowledge of midcentury Canadian popular fiction, Thornton Wilder was the first connection I made to Morgan’s Castle and Grant’s possible influences. No, not the playwright Thornton Wilder, beloved by generations of high school drama teachers for Our Town; I mean the Wilder who wrote a screenplay later turned to a film directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1942, Shadow of a Doubt—a cat-and-mouse tale that involves a teenage girl and her charming uncle, who is actually the sociopathic Merry Widow Murderer. (The film’s best line is spoken by jaded Uncle Charlie: “The world’s a hell. What does it matter what happens in it?”)
Had they found it, Hitchcock and Wilder could have made a noir classic from Morgan’s Castle (the cover of the 2026 re-issue wisely kept the original ‘girl afraid’ image). Certainly Grant’s novel has all the right ingredients. Ulterior motives, double meanings, and murder, especially.
The story starts simply. Raised in “a small place, nothing but a pinprick on the map” by her father, Sidney, Laura Dean is a high school student with few prospects, save for being a lifelong caregiver for Sidney, an artist possessed of “Rabelaisian charm” (and a dyed beard) but questionable talent.
Richer relatives, haughtily worried about Laura “living too close to nature,” invite her to their home in Ontario vineyard country. During the trip to her aunt’s stately home, known locally as Morgan’s Castle, Laura imagines the train car carrying “her to some adventure.”
She’s right and also quite wrong.
Laura soon meets Charlotte Morgan—“what used to be called in Victorian novels a delicate woman.” Easily fatigued and prone to retiring to her room to recuperate, she spends “much time … patting her face with a scented handkerchief.” Despite the apparent delicacy, Charlotte has plans, all of which are known and supported by her doting sister, doctor, and son—enablers all of them. Charlotte’s marriage to the deceased Morgan, a man three times her age, occurred after the accidental death of her first husband. Morgan’s Castle, in fact, has more that its fair share of accidental deaths—by bridge, by stair, by poison. (Not to overstate the Hitchcock connection, but two other of the director’s films from the ‘40s, Rebecca and Suspicion, came to mind as I raced through the pages of Grant’s blackly funny tale that often also has the DNA of a drawing room comedy.)
With an irksome father in tow, conniving relatives given to half-truths, a cute boy next door, and her sense of misgiving growing at a viral rate, Laura emerges as the novel’s emotional anchor. As Grant spins a delectable story chock full of tightly wound characters and dastardly revelations as it barrels toward yet another suspicious death, Laura grasps an adult lesson about self-preservation. Fun, mile-a-minute and maybe just a bit cynical about the human heart, Morgan’s Castle earned its keep in 1964 and will continue to do so over six decades later.
Morgan’s Castle earned its keep in 1964 and will continue to do so over six decades later.
Jan Hilliard was the pen name of Hilda Kay Grant (1910-1996). Born and raised in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, she studied at New York’s Grand Central School of Art and lived most of her adult life in Ontario. Her first book, The Salt Box (1951), based loosely on her childhood, was awarded a Stephen Leacock Medal. It was followed by five novels, the last being Morgan’s Castle (1964).
Publisher: Véhicule Press (February 12, 2026)
Paperback 4.25″ x 7″ | 180 pages
ISBN: 9781550656985
Brett Josef Grubisic resides on Salt Spring Island, BC, where he's currently at war with his sixth novel. Previous novels include The Age of Cities and My Two-Faced Luck.
