Soldier’s Heart

With Soldier’s Heart, French looks back in time at the thoroughly
alienated sixteen-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

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
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