The Rising Village traces various aspects of a particular village's history from its beginnings as a European settlement in the seventeenth century up to and into the twentieth century. The village is Petite Riviere in Lunenburg County on the South Shore of Nova Scotia. Its first European settlers were Razily's French habitants in 1632–33, but it began a new life in the 1760s when English-speaking families, mainly from Ulster and the British–American colonies, made it their home. From that time it grew slowly but steadily from a mere hamlet to a populous village, deriving its life from both land and sea. At its peak in the late nineteenth century, Petite Riviere was a community of about five hundred people. This book records some facets of its long history.

Malcolm G. Parks is a native of Petite Riviere and a great-great-great-great grandson of one of its first British settlers, James Park. He holds degrees from Dalhousie University and the University of Toronto. From 1956 until 1989 he was a member of the Faculty of Dalhousie University, retiring in 1989 as Professor of English and Assistant Dean of Graduate Studies. He now lives in Petite Riviere.