On Stephen Granger's first day on the job at Conroy Manufacturing Company in St. Catharines, Ontario, he was met by a group of workers with baseball bats. They were ready to lay a beating on him because Stephen was a Yankee coming into Canada to take away a job. In September 1937, during the throes of the Great Depression, jobs were scarce and fiercely protected. So begins The Granger Chronicles, the saga of an extraordinary family spanning over 100 years and centred in rural Hungary, Buffalo New York and St. Catharines. Interweaving tales of Granger family secrets and adventures with social history and world events, this book provides a vivid, first-hand view of life during one of history's most dynamic eras: the 19th and 20th centuries.
What prompted the Grangers in 1905 to flee rural Hungary and follow the siren call of “American fever”? What was it like to be a “twenty-something” woman in the flapper era, as Mary McSorley Granger was? Or to ride the rails across America in the 1870s as Mary's father Richard McSorley did at age 11?
The Granger Chronicles brings to life the people, places and times that shaped both the Granger family and North American society overall.
