Loss of love and life is a familiar literary theme. The emphasis, though, is usually on the personal, but noted Canadian novelist and poet Anne Michaels, in “The Winter Vault,“ sets her story of personal loss in the context of historical events that irrevocably affected thousands. The events she evokes—the building of the St. Lawrence Seaway (begun in 1954) and the Aswan Dam (in the 1960s)—ask larger questions than the “Why me?“ of individual tragedies. And her protagonists, Avery and his wife, Jean, are appropriately sensitive and thoughtful observers of the destruction wrought by these two giant engineering projects.