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The Purchased Bride
A young Hungarian woman is sent to marry in southern Alberta, circa 1890; historical nonfiction. Excerpts from a 2,000-word creative nonfiction piece published in Western People, July 1988.
He must have been desperate to leave Hungary at 15, alone and without means of support. Something must have driven him to seek a life where he could keep the pigs he raised and the grain he grew. Something must have said it was not always his pig that died and the government's pig that lived. Something must have insisted that starvation was not a necessary part of life.
He would sit by the fire, thumbs tucked into the frayed edges of his overalls, and think about home. He would smell the soup pot or the stew kettle bubbling over the open fire and wish for a woman to make biscuits and pies, one who would care how he felt when the hail took his crop, one to warm his bed and his heart and bring purpose and pleasure to his life.
He tried to find a wife but the fine ladies of the settlement had little patience with his broken words and uncultured ways. He was proud. So, he sat gazing into the fire, dreaming his lonely dreams.
He saw her face in the fire--the child from home; the child who was now a woman; a Hungarian woman . . .
. . . She stood alone at the train station, a handwoven scarf knotted under her chin. She clutched a basket that held her only treasures. She was afraid and didn't want to be there. It didn't matter that this man would give her a good life. She was only 13 and not ready for a home, a husband and children of her own . . .
Joyce LaVerne White
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Last updated: September 17, 1996 
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