Fruit Loops

The Montreal melon was once one of the crown jewels of Quebec’s exports. Resembling a cantaloupe, in the early twentieth century it commanded as much as $3 each in fine grocery stores in New York City. Even as late as 1961, the Gazette columnist Harriet Hill scoffed, “Ask us honestly if we think the mango has anything on the Montreal melon and we would back the melon to the death.” But soon after, the fruit was being mourned, with demand down and incompatibility with new, large-scale agricultural machinery up. “The Montreal melon has a very soft skin. It doesn’t travel well. It doesn’t save well. It is a vanishing breed,” the Gazette reported in 1965. Two years later, the city would hurtle into the future with Expo 67, and the fruit that bore its name would be forgotten.

It is from these seeds that sprouts Eric Dupont’s novel The Colour of Time: or, the Incredible Story of Mary Gallagher. Alleged to be a sex worker, Gallagher was brutally...