US states such as Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, etc. The 1939-40 dating lends further weight to the idea that "Horizon" is somewhere in the US, as Canada entered WWII in September 1939, which would have placed considerable strain on any Canadian community (and the war and its effects on the community would surely have been noted in any Canadian diary of the time). However, as the US did not enter the war until December 1941, it is quite plausible that an American diary of 1939-40 would have had no mention of WWII and its effects. Despite this, Paul Denham's 1980 summary of the novel states: There are some very good reasons why the novel has come to be so important to the Canadian tradition. It is a study of the failed artistic imagination, and of an eroding puritanism; it is also ... a good example of Frye's concept of the garrison mentality, in its exploration of the peculiarities of the Canadian experience of nature and its relation to civilization. It is, then, a powerfully mythical novel in which many of the characteristic themes and attitudes of Canadian literature are sharply focused. Also, the patterns of imagery through which much of the novel's meaning is conveyed are densely and carefully worked... If we approach the novel as a poem, through its imagery, or as a model for the Canadian identity, we are likely to find it a very important work indeed. Publication details 1941, US, Reynal & Hitchcock, Pub date 1941, hardback (First edition) 1957, Canada, McClelland & Stewart, Pub date 1957, paperback; reprinted since, by M&S, U of Nebraska References Wenzl, Bernhard. "'This is a fundamentalist town': The Prairie Town as a Site of Social and Cultural Conflict in Sinclair Ross’s As for Me and My House". Social and Cultural Interaction and Literary Landscapes in the Canadian West. Ed. Waldemar Zacharasiewicz and Fritz P. Kirsch. Vienna University Press, 2010, 173–179. Footnotes 1941 Canadian novels Novels set in Saskatchewan New Canadian Library Reynal & Hitchcock books