The Foreigner: A Tale of Saskatchewan

By Ralph Connor and Daniel Coleman

The Foreigner (1909) tells the story of Kalman Kalmar, a young Ukrainian immigrant working in rural Saskatchewan. It addresses the themes of male maturation, cultural assimilation, and a form of “muscular Christianity” recurring in Connor’s popular Western tales. Daniel Coleman’s afterword considers the text’s departure from Connor’s established fiction formulas and provides a unique framework for understanding its depiction of difference.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier University Press
• Release date: Apr 17, 2014
• ISBN: 9781554589456

Ralph Connor

Ralph Connor was the pseudonym of best-selling Canadian writer Charles William Gordon. Born in a small town in Ontario, Gordon’s interest in writing was ignited as a student first at the University of Toronto and then at Knox College, where he completed his divinity studies. Gordon went on to become a reverend in both the Presbyterian and United churches, and used the pen name Ralph Connor to keep his literary activities separate from his religious vocation. Over the course of his career, Connor published more than forty works, including the wildly popular The Sky Pilot, which sold more than one million copies, Glengarry School Days, The Man from Glengarry, and Postscript to Adventure, a posthumous autobiography published after Gordon’s death in 1937.