Voyageurs: A Novel
Oct 2014 · Open Road + Grove/Atlantic
Ebook
481
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About this ebook
A Quaker’s faith is tested during the War of 1812 in this “stunning work of historical fiction” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review).
Mark Greenhow, a naive and peaceful Quaker, lands on the shores of North America on the eve of the War of 1812, thinking only of finding the missing sister, a missionary whose adventurous spirit he has always admired. His pursuit begins by hitching a ride with the voyageurs who have canoed the rivers, transporting the tons of furs that feed the trade that has made the region a battleground of the French and British empires.
Though Mark enters this brave new world with his conscience clean and his convictions sound, his encounters with a place and people he never could have imagined test his rigid upbringing. The backwoods of Canada have certainly led his sister astray; she has been excommunicated from the Society of Friends for running off with a non-Quaker. After her child is stillborn she runs again, deep into Indian country. On this increasingly desperate search, Mark finds himself among spies and domestic warriors, displaced natives, infidels, and the pious each engaged in their own battles to maintain their particular way of life.
With Elphinstone’s crisp and effortless prose, coupled with her riveting, organic way with description, her fully drawn characters, and the history of the region, she “brings the landscapes and peoples of 1800s Canada back to thrilling life in her pacy, colorful and intelligent epic: the finest trip along these rivers since Brian Moore’s great Black Robe” (The Independent).
Mark Greenhow, a naive and peaceful Quaker, lands on the shores of North America on the eve of the War of 1812, thinking only of finding the missing sister, a missionary whose adventurous spirit he has always admired. His pursuit begins by hitching a ride with the voyageurs who have canoed the rivers, transporting the tons of furs that feed the trade that has made the region a battleground of the French and British empires.
Though Mark enters this brave new world with his conscience clean and his convictions sound, his encounters with a place and people he never could have imagined test his rigid upbringing. The backwoods of Canada have certainly led his sister astray; she has been excommunicated from the Society of Friends for running off with a non-Quaker. After her child is stillborn she runs again, deep into Indian country. On this increasingly desperate search, Mark finds himself among spies and domestic warriors, displaced natives, infidels, and the pious each engaged in their own battles to maintain their particular way of life.
With Elphinstone’s crisp and effortless prose, coupled with her riveting, organic way with description, her fully drawn characters, and the history of the region, she “brings the landscapes and peoples of 1800s Canada back to thrilling life in her pacy, colorful and intelligent epic: the finest trip along these rivers since Brian Moore’s great Black Robe” (The Independent).
About the author
Margaret Elphinstone is the author of eight novels, including The Incomer (1987), A Sparrow's Flight (1989), Islanders (1994), The Sea Road (2000), Hy Brasil (2002), Voyageurs (2003) and Light (2006). She has also had published short stories, poetry and two books on organic gardening. Her next book, And Some There Be, will be published by Canongate in 2009. She lives in Glasgow and teaches at the University of Strathclyde
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