One of Canada’s bestselling novelists of her time, Young, who passed away in 1996, authored six novels between 1959 and 1969, including Psyche and The Torontonians, which proved to be among the bestsellers.

Her legacy continues. The author’s daughter Valerie Argue was approached in February of last year by McGill/Queen’s University Press about the possibility of reissuing The Torontonians. About seven months ago, Argue was again approached by the press for approval to reissue Psyche.

“I’m her only surviving relative, so it was a big thrill for me to get a call from the associate dean of arts at McGill University,” says Argue, who spends the summer months living in Muskoka and the winter in Toronto. “She told me a colleague of hers, a history professor, had been using The Torontonians in her history classes since 1992 and it had become harder and harder to get second-hand copies. She and her colleague had apparently gone to McGill/Queen’s University Press to reissue the book and when they said yes, they started looking for the right person for permission. After two years, they found me. I agreed, and because I’d been in the world of publishing myself, I wrote the preface to it. A year later, the press decided to do my mother’s first book Psyche, which I also wrote the preface to, and they say it will be available in about a month.”

Published in 1959, Psyche takes readers on a journey with a young child who is kidnapped from her home and left to grow up in the hostile hills of the north country. It shows the abandoned child’s resilience as she ultimately finds redemption through art, education and psychology.  

The Torontonians was published in 1960 and tells the story of how a desperate housewife and her husband renovate a house in the suburbs and she suddenly finds herself with everything she’d dreamed of but lacks the happiness she thought she would find after moving. The book touches on consumerism, materialism and the problems faced living a suburban life.

“The time is blurred, but I would say it has a 1930’s feel,” says Argue of Psyche, which she admits is one of her favourites among the books her mother wrote. “There is some reference to Muskoka and my mother knew the place well. When my family first came to Canada from England, they spent their summers on Fairy Lake and from there they built a cottage on Lake Muskoka. My mother spent all her childhood summers here. That was the happiest and best time of her life. When she met my father, he had spent his summers in Algonquin Park. They started going to the park more and more and ended up building a cottage in the park, which I’ve owned for many years now.”

Argue fondly remembers her first encounter with Pysche. She and her parents were sitting around the dining room table discussing questions of which was a stronger influence: nature or nurture. Her mother would openly talk about the books she was planning on writing, but when the time came to put the pen to paper, she hardly spoke a word about what she was working on.

“Since my mother’s family has all died, I didn’t have anyone to share her life with,” says Argue. “It’s been one long celebration of her life to have the books reissued. It was really quite amazing for all of this to just come out of the blue. I think this is great, not only for my mother, but for Canadian authors in general. There was some resistance in covering a dead author, but I think in this country, we haven’t celebrated our past, both literary and in other ways. It is important. It has an impact. With The Torontonians, people found it relevant and current and Psyche is a timeless, wonderful story. It’s nice to see them still available.”

Argue says it is her hope that her mother’s third book, Anything Could Happen!, a fictionalized, somewhat autobiographical story of her life in Muskoka, will be the next to be reissued.

“My mother lived in many different places, but this was her home in her heart.”

To buy a copy of The Torontonians or Psyche, inquire at local book stores.