Novel Title: Unavoidable Confrontations
Time Setting: 2020
Genre: Life
Minimum Word Goal: 90,000
Timespan: 15 September–7 November
Location: Golden Prairie, Saskatchewan
Main Characters: Axel Kjeldsen, Madeleine Patriksson
Background Information:
Axel was born the oldest son and second child of six to a farmer and his wife who made their home in central Sjælland in Denmark. He was taught much about farming by his father, as well as his grandfather, who still helped out with the farm, even though he was technically retired.
His family had farmed the same piece of land for centuries, as well as attending the same Lutheran church for centuries, and Axel was no different, being baptised at the church as an infant, as well as being taken there every Sunday.
It was evident from an early age that Axel had his father’s temper and obstinacy, which led to a number of confrontations that started out as fun for his father, but gradually became more serious until, within months of Axel’s graduation, they got into a savage altercation that ended with Axel leaving the farm for Copenhagen; this was caused in part because of Axel’s rejection of religion, and in part because he was frustrated by his father and grandfather’s unwillingness to explain how or why they did anything on the farm, and had no ears to hear out his ideas for changes and improvements to how they did things.
In Copenhagen Axel developed a strong relationship with a young woman he’d met a few years before and also discovered he had an uncle on his father’s side whom he’d never heard of before.
Further investigation led him to learn that this uncle had also rejected religion and otherwise done a lot of things not all that different from what Axel had done to draw his father’s ire.
This uncle had been disowned by Axel’s grandfather and had left Denmark for Canada before Axel was even born. When Axel contacted his uncle he was pleasantly surprised by his uncle’s willingness to talk to him, even offering to help him emigrate to Canada to be the son his uncle had never had.
Since his uncle had a farm in Canada and Axel not only didn’t enjoy the city life in Copenhagen, but genuinely wanted to farm, he accepted the offer; unfortunately his girlfriend wasn’t willing to join him because his uncle farmed just outside a small town about four hours away from the nearest city comparable to Copenhagen in size, and she didn’t want to be that far away from a Copenhagen-like city.
Following his arrival in Canada Axel took some secondary education, not only to help round out his farming knowledge as a whole, but to help him learn the Canadian system faster than he suspected he would otherwise, while spending the summers helping out on his uncle’s farm.
Axel found his uncle was everything his father hadn’t been: willing to explain, willing to listen, willing to let him do what he wanted outside of work, willing to let him try things to see for himself if they would work like he thought they would.
Since graduating from his secondary schooling Axel has taken on increasing roles and responsibilities on his uncle’s farm, as his uncle is nearing his sixties and looking to maybe retire from farming soon, and it’s not like Axel isn’t an adult anyways.
Born the youngest child and only daughter to a heavy duty mechanic and his librarian wife, Madeleine spent her early years in Helsingborg, Sweden where her mother worked in a local library while her father drove around doing on-site mechanical repair of farm equipment for farmers in the area.
The year she turned eleven her father was hired by a farmer in Eslöv to be a full-time mechanic for the farm in order to increase efficiency on the farm by reducing the wait time for a mechanic to come to their aid.
As a result of this Madeleine ended up meeting the farmer’s second oldest son, Erik, a meeting that didn’t become significant until they became teenagers and took interest in each other that led to a romantic proposal on the waterfront at Malmö when Madeleine was eighteen.
During their engagement Erik informed Madeleine that he meant to move to Canada to farm because of the fact that his older brother was going to get the family farm from his father and his search for land to start a farm of his own in Sweden had proven futile.
Initially Madeleine was a little stunned by the idea of leaving her homeland for a foreign country, but as time passed she got more used to the idea and willingly did what she could to prepare for moving to Canada before they got married, doing the rest after they were married and her name was legally changed accordingly.
They didn’t leave Sweden right away, however, as they still needed to find a place to live in Canada; they remained in Sweden while looking and Madeleine ended up conceiving a child during that time.
When they finally found a property Madeleine willingly agreed to move right away, even though she was pregnant, and so they left Sweden for Canada, specifically western Saskatchewan, where they discovered just how they’d gotten the property they’d gotten for such a deal: all they got was the land and empty buildings, there wasn’t even a crop in the field.
As a result Erik and Madeleine had to buy furniture before they even went to bed that night — thankfully they met some neighbours who were willing and able to help them get set up with what they needed — and Erik was left having to look for a job instead of being able to run his own farm.
He got a job at a neighbouring farm owned and operated by a man who had moved from Scandinavia to Canada himself some four decades before, helping with the harvest at first, and then helping out in the dairy — which was a part of farming Erik hadn’t done in Sweden — before making an arrangement with the farm owner that saw Erik renting his land to the farmer, but having control over what was planted on it and how it was cared for.
In the midst of it all Madeleine gave birth to her and Erik’s child, a little girl they named Alina, and thus has filled her time caring for her little girl and taking care of the house as well while Erik works hard to make enough money to get his farm off the ground and no longer need to work for anyone.
Pronunciations:
Axel: ahks'l
Kjeldsen: k'yelledsehn
Copenhagen: kohpehnhahgehn
Madeleine: mahdehlaye'ne
Sjælland: shayeland
Eslöv: Ayslerv
Malmö: mullmer
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