Mazo de la Roche's writing is consistently concerned with the relationship between nature and culture. This dialectic is often embodied in the conflict between individualistic characters who express feeling and intuition, and repressed and repressive figures who fear disorder, defend tradition, and cling to barren respectability. The tensions created by these contradictory values are dramatized in two of her earliest and lesser known novels, Explorers of the Dawn and The Thunder of New Wings. These works foreshadow the more sophisticated patterns of de la Roche's later work and illustrate her faith in the human capacity for love as a source of reconciliation between the contradictory needs associated with nature and culture.
