Abstract

A Case of Twelve by Julia Gedeon-Matusky is a fictional coming-of-age story that explores the challenges facing a teenaged boy and his Slovak-Canadian family during the politically and socially tumultuous period in Quebec from 1964 to 1967. The family struggles financially and personally as it witnesses its Slovak immigrant community dissipate into the anonymity of the larger society. The members ofthe Danco family resist adapting to an increasingly French milieu within Montreal because they consider themselves part of English Canada rather than Quebec. They become pitted against the frustration, anger and occasionally violent actions of some Quebecois who feel their French language, culture and business opportunities continue to be thwarted by the predominantly English business elite. The novel also relates how various ethnic cultures intersect daily within an increasingly cosmopolitan Montreal as the city prepares to welcome the world at Expo '67. At the same time, it conveys some of the prejudices that were alive and well against women, divorced parents, people with disabilities, homosexuals, and the hippie culture then coming into vogue. Marek Danco filters all these experiences as a 13-to-15-year-old boy who is striving to attain his personal space and freedom as well as sexual experience, all while trying to figure who might have abused a little girl who he helps to rescue from a manhole.