Street of Riches is a novel by the Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 author Gabrielle Roy

Gabrielle Roy

Gabrielle Roy, CC, FRSC was a French Canadian author.- Biography :Born in Saint Boniface , Manitoba, Roy was educated at Saint Joseph's Academy...

.

Largely autobiographical, it traces the growth and development of a young girl into an accomplished writer. Like much of Roy's fiction, it includes a very autobiographical style and weaves vignettes into a tapestry of the specific time and place. The book covers themes including the social divide between the French Canadian

French Canadian

French Canadian or Francophone Canadian, , generally refers to the descendents of French colonists who arrived in New France in the 17th and 18th centuries...

 and English Canadian

English Canadian

An English Canadian is a Canadian of English ancestry; it is used primarily in contrast with French Canadian. Canada is an officially bilingual state, with English and French official language communities. Immigrant cultural groups ostensibly integrate into one or both of these communities, but...

 communities in what were the twin cities of St. Boniface and Winnipeg

Winnipeg

Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of Manitoba, Canada, and is the primary municipality of the Winnipeg Capital Region, with more than half of Manitoba's population. It is located near the longitudinal centre of North America, at the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers .The name...

, Manitoba

Manitoba

Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...

, European immigration to the Canadian prairies

Dominion Lands Act

The Dominion Lands Act was an 1872 Canadian law that aimed to encourage the settlement of Canada's Prairie provinces. It was closely based on the United States Homestead Act, setting conditions in which the western lands could be settled and their natural resources developed...

, family dynamics and racial integration.

As Rue Deschambault, the novel was first published in the original French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 by Beauchemin in 1955. An English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 translation by Harry L. Binsse, Street of Riches, was published by McClelland and Stewart

McClelland and Stewart

McClelland & Stewart Limited is a Canadian publishing company. It is partially owned by Random House of Canada, now a subsidiary of Bertelsmann....

 in 1957.