David French's award-winning and ongoing dramatic cycle about the Mercer
family, both in their native Newfoundland and later, as participants in
the great outport clearances, relocated in Toronto, has become a
defining part of Canada's theatrical history.
Set in Toronto, the first play, Leaving Home (1972), introduced the
family saga's key figure, Jacob Mercer, who appears in all of the plays.
Also in this series are Of the Fields, Lately (1973); Salt-Water
Moon (1984); and 1949 (1988), which deals with this expatriate
family's reaction to Newfoundland's entry into confederation.
With Soldier's Heart, French looks back in time at the thoroughly
alienated 16-year-old Jacob, standing on a railway platform, his
suitcase and one-way ticket away from home in hand. His father Esau, a
veteran of the First World War, rushes to the station in a last-ditch
effort to persuade his son not to leave. Unable to speak of what had
happened in the Great War since his return, Esau begins, in halting and
tentative language to tell of his comrades and his brother, their
training in Scotland, the agony of Gallipoli, and finally the formative
events at the battle of the Somme at Beaumont Hamel. At first defensive
in response to his son's probing and impatient questioning, Esau's
answers evolve into stories of pride, foolishness, anger, desperation
and finally mindless terror, leaving only the image of a man driven by
the blind animal instinct to survive. It is this devastating and
unsparing account of all that is in a soldier's heart, that finally
brings father and son back together.
