Book excerpt: The Ekelund family moved to Canada in 1903 and settled in what is now Southern Alberta when Bertha, their sixth child was only five years old. Growing up in a family that was torn apart by the tragedy of their mother’s death, Bertha developed an independent and unpredictable approach to life. “This is the truth, is it not?” she writes to her sister at one point, confirming her belief that the truth could be bent at will. Smart, creative, bold and impulsive, Bertha spent her life trying to leave her family roots in Alberta, only to return with frequently disastrous consequences. She was married at seventeen in Medicine Hat, Alberta, and divorced at twenty-seven in San Francisco, California, only to remarry the same man a few years later. This is the love story and the life story of Bertha Marshall (Ekelund).