Maria Chapdelaine was a French-Canadian girl whose family lived in the northern part of Quebec province near Lake St. John, a country to which spring came very late in the year and the winters, always severe, came too soon. Maria's father, Samuel Chapdelaine, had moved his family several times to new locations in the north country. Each time, he hoped to get away from neighbors and civilization, for he was a man who took great delight in the hard work of clearing land from the wilderness but disliked to farm that land after it had been won.