Walker Brothers Cowboy

Alice Munro (née Laidlaw) was born in Wingham in Ontario, Canada, on July 10, 1931. Her mother, Anne Laidlaw, left her family farm against her parents’ wishes to pursue an education. She worked as a schoolteacher before marrying Munro’s father, and the couple used her savings to start a fox fur farm on the outskirts of town, which is where Munro was raised.

Although Munro is known for her fiction, critics have noted the memoir-like aspect of much of her writing, for many details from her own life are echoed in her stories. Sometimes these details are very literal, as in “Walker Brothers Cowboy,” in which the narrator’s father is the owner of a failed fox fur farm. Other details, however, are more emotional than literal. In “Walker Brothers Cowboy,” for example, the narrator is keenly aware of the strong tension between her mother’s proud desire for affluence and the family’s poverty-stricken, rural lifestyle. This disparity mirrors the issues that Munro faced in her own childhood home, for her mother’s aspirations for a more affluent life alienated the family from the neighbors, leaving Munro feeling isolated from the wider community.

In addition to imbuing her stories with autobiographical details, Munro also brings the landscape of rural Ontario to life in her stories, and this pattern is particularly evident in all of the stories featured in Dance of the Happy Shades.