Although set in rural Ontario, there isn’t a cow to be seen in this Depression-era story from Alice Munro. The “cowboy”, once a successful fox farmer, is now a door-to-door household product salesman. The story’s central themes are father-daughter relationships, poverty, pride, dealing with reduced circumstances, and nostalgia. The man’s wife is bitterly resentful of the extent to which the family have “come down” in the world, while an arguably worse-off ex-girlfriend he and his children visit during one of his rounds is still able to enjoy life. Understandably, his daughter (the narrator) is somewhat disturbed by the meeting.
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