The Ballad of Samuel Hewitt

This thesis is a novel divided into three parts and thirty-six chapters. It tells the story of 17 year-old Samuel Hewitt and his Shuswap friend, Charleyboy, and their quest for a place to belong. Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley, the novel follows the picaresque adventures of the two boys as they struggle to become men. In Kelowna, they join a traveling circus up from the United States. Charleyboy finds a home among the circus folk, but Samuel is far from content. When Samuel falls in love with the star performer, the mounting conflict comes to a head. Charleyboy loses his life in an effort to protect his friend, and Samuel has to continue his journey alone, trying, in vain, to make sense of loss, and searching for a place to call ‘home’.