A Discovery Of Strangers

by Rudy Wiebe

A Discovery of Strangers tells of the meeting of two civilizations – the first encounter of the nomadic Dene people with Europeans – in an imaginative reconstruction of John Franklin’s first map-making expedition in 1819—21 in what is now the Northwest Territories. At the heart of the novel is a love story between twenty-two-year-old midshipman Robert Hood, the Franklin expedition’s artist, and a fifteen-year-old Yellowknife girl known to the British as Greenstockings. A national bestseller, published also in Germany and China, Wiebe’s first novel in eleven years and his twelfth work of fiction won him his second Governor General’s Award for Fiction at the age of sixty, over strong competition from Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro.

It is a story of love, murder, greed and passion in an unforgiving Arctic landscape. French-Canadian voyageurs paddle the small British expedition into the land of the Yellowknives to search for the fabled Northwest Passage. While this trip would not prove as disastrous as Franklin’s third expedition, nevertheless more than half his men did not survive the harsh conditions. The long winter stopover allows for interchange between the cultures. When the son of a Lancashire clergyman and the daughter of a native elder fall in love, they devise a language of their own to cross their wordless divide. Hood will not survive to see the birth of his daughter, perishing in 1821 in an attempt to reach Greenstockings’s band 450 kilometres south. Nor will the Yellowknives survive much within twenty years, they will be all but wiped out by a smallpox epidemic brought by the white men.

The novel is the work of a poetic mind, written in several of the British explorers, of the Tetsot’ine people – named Yellowknife by the strangers – and, most unexpected of all, of the animals that live on the Barrenlands. Wiebe climbs inside the characters, bringing them and the North to life. “Most Canadians have never seen that landscape. Yet I see it as being at the centre of our national psyche. That’s the roots of our world, right there.” He began work on the novel in earnest following a canoe trip between the Coppermine River and the site of Fort Enterprize in 1988, when he was first enraptured by the landscape. The novel contains vivid images, such as stunning descriptions of caribou bursting through snow. In calling the Arctic ‘A Land Beyond Words,’ Wiebe admits how difficult it was to do it justice. “I think there’s always a total contradiction in even trying to do such a novel,” he said in an interview, “and yet it’s the very contradiction out of which any kind of artistic struggle must come. It’s not even worth trying if it doesn’t seem impossible.”

In researching historical sources, Wiebe found letters, earlier accounts of the region such as those of Samuel Hearne, as well as oral stories and mythology told by the Dene elders. “I take the facts, as many of the facts as history gives me, and I use them to tell the story that I believe these facts tell us beyond themselves . . . . How did it happen, why did it happen, what was going on inside people’s heads while it was happening, why did they do what they did?” Franklin’s book on the first expedition contained a small paragraph mentioning Greenstockings as the most beautiful girl of the Dene, and a sketch of her and her father Keskarrah drawn by Robert Hood. Wiebe also discovered a claim made years later by one of the members of the team that Greenstockings had had a child by Hood (these facts are related in his book Playing A Contemplation Concerning the Arctic ). From these details, he created a powerful story of their union. “It’s imagination all right, but it has to be an informed imagination.”

The Kingston Whig-Standard claimed the book “is to the North what Big Bear was to the West – an imaginative, and possibly definitive, evocation of a crucial time, place and situation.” It is part of a body of significant historical fiction by Wiebe, including The Scorched-Wood People , which tells the story of Louis Riel, Gabriel Dumont and the Northwest Rebellion of 1885. The third Franklin expedition has been the subject of works by Margaret Atwood and Mordecai Richler, as well as accounts such as Frozen in Time by John Geiger and forensic anthropologist Owen Beattie. A Discovery of Strangers explores the expedition Wiebe found more that of first contact between the Europeans and the Natives, which was so damaging to the Native people in the end, and so essential to the survival of the Europeans. In his acceptance speech for the Governor General’s Award, Wiebe “We know too little about our selves. In this enormous, beautiful land we inhabit, we seem to have no eyes to see, no ears to hear, the stories that are everywhere about us and clamouring to be told . . . . Only the stories we tell each other can create us as a true Canadian people.”

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Canada, Canadian Literature, Historical, Indigenous, Book Club

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Wiebe was born at Speedwell, near Fairholme, Saskatchewan in what would later become his family’s chicken barn. For thirteen years he lived in an isolated Mennonite community of about 250 people. He did not speak English until age six since Mennonites at that time customarily spoke Low German at home and standard German at Church. He attended the small school three miles from his farm and the Speedwell Mennonite Brethren Church.

He received his B.A. in 1956 from the University of Alberta and then studied at the University of Tübingen in West Germany. In 1958 he married Tena Isaak, with whom he had two children.

He is deeply committed to the literary culture of Canada and has shown a particular interest in the traditions and struggles of people in the Prairie provinces, both whites and Aboriginals.

Wiebe won the Governor General's Award for Fiction twice, for The Temptations of Big Bear (1973) and A Discovery of Strangers (1994). He was awarded the Royal Society of Canada's Lorne Pierce Medal in 1986. In 2000 he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Reviews

[Christian · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm being very generous with this score, because what in the actual f*ck was that.

[Katie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I genuinely don't understand how this mess of a book has managed to win an award. I'll just go ahead and list everything that bothered me. I'd list positive things as well, but apart from the okay writing, I can't think of anything.

What I disliked:
- There was literally no plot. Like, a couple things happened in the last quarter or so, but that's literally it. The pages were rather filled with a study of the differences between natives and white people, whose accuracy I, personally, cannot comment on.
- Although the narration is entirely in third person, the narrator is more or less omniscient and at times describes in detail what is going on in the character's minds. This is problematic because half of the book follows native characters. It portrays their thoughts, beliefs, mindsets, customs, prejudices, and various other deeply personal or culturally important aspects. The thing is, the author is white. I will admit that I did not check what kind of research he did for this book, but some of the things portrayed seemed rather problematic to me.
- The portrayal of women in this book is horrendous. While I do not claim that the author himself thinks of women as inferior, the vast majority of his characters do - and he does not portray this mindset as wrong. I also disliked the various scenes containing rape and sexual assault. They could have been handled much better or even left out entirely.
- The same goes for the occasionally unnecessarily vulgar language. Nothing I'm not used to, really, but I don't see the point in using it if it does not do anything for the atmosphere or the story.

I'm sure there are a couple more things that just won't come to mind right now or that would need too much explaining, but all in all, I just disliked this book a lot. I read it for a class on negotiations of alterity in anglophone literature and I see why my professor chose it: The one thing it does arguably well is highlight the differences between natives and white people, both of whom view the other as different (and often inferior). It remains to be seen how accurate Wiebe's portrayal of these differences is, though - I'm fairly curious what my professor is going to say about it.

[Fuzzy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An epic journey recounted with such exquisite detail as to leave the reader immersed in a sense of awe and wonder, and sometimes disgust, at the capacity of extreme duality of humanity. The author weaves a web of words that so intricately describes the natural world that the imagery leaves you mesmerized. Although a book of historical fiction, it is a rare glimpse into the history of Northern exploration of Canada by Europeans which pays respect to the perspective and role of the First Nations and Voyageurs who made their survival possible.

[Mary · Rating 1 out of 5]

Absolutely not

[Buchdoktor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Keskarrah, dem Ältesten der Yellowknife-Indianer (ihr Stamm gehört zu den Dené) war von Anfang klar, dass die Expedition der "Englischen" zum Scheitern verurteilt sein würde. Das Gesetz der Gastfreundschaft schrieb ihm zwar vor, die Fremden mit Vorräten, Kanus und Trägern auszustatten. Um als erfahrener Mann vom Stamm der T'atsaot'ine in der Region des Großen Sklavensees die Fremden von ihrem Vorsatz abzubringen, in den Norden zu ziehen, fehlten Keskarrah offenbar die richtigen Worte. Frau und Töchter des Schamanen wundern sich über die Fremden, die zu viel essen, zu viel Ausrüstung mit sich herumschleppen und selbst keine Frauen als Arbeitskräfte mitgebracht haben. Wenn Frauen als Arbeitskräfte fehlen, die warme Kleidung anfertigen und das Fleisch und die Häute der Jagdbeute verarbeiten, ist ein Stamm zum Untergang verurteilt. Sollten die Fremden in ihrer Unkenntnis auf die Unterstützung ihrer Pläne durch den Stamm der T'atsaot'ine beharren, werden die Teilnehmer der Expedition und im schlimmsten Fall auch der Indianerstamm den nächsten Winter nicht überleben. Aus der Perspektive des Unteroffiziers Robert Hood, des Schiffsarztes John Richard und Greenstockings, der Tochter des Schamanen, liefert Rudy Wiebe eine ungewohnte Sicht auf die Franklin-Expedition (1845 bis 1848). Besonders bewegend sind die Erlebnisse Greenstockings, die beim Zusammentreffen mit den Fremden erst 14 Jahre alt ist, und ihrer jüngeren Schwester. Frauen der T'atsaot'ine kennen es nicht anders, als dass sie von den Männern des eigenen Stamms mit Gewalt genommen oder von fremden Stämmen geraubt werden. Franklins Männer, die unter Alkohol eine für die Ureinwohner bisher unbekannte Gewalttätigkeit zeigen, werden von der Wehrhaftigkeit der Frauen überrascht, die sich mit ihren scharfen Ausbeinmessern entschlossen zur Wehr setzen können. Wiebes Sprache lässt Zeiten anklingen, in denen Menschen und Tiere sich noch miteinander verständigen konnten. Sein Blick zeigt voller Ironie die Unfähigkeit der Weißen, die Kenntnisse der Ureinwohner zu achten und für das eigene Überleben in klirrender Kälte zu nutzen.

Textauszug
"Plötzlich ist Greenstockings froh, dass sie sich auf eine so sinnlose Reise aufmachen und verschwinden und viele Tage, gar einen Monat, womöglich einen halben Winter lang durch den Schnee stapfen werden. Während der gesamten dunklen Zeit wird keiner von ihnen überraschend im Eingang ihres Zeltes auftauchen - wenn überhaupt noch einmal. Vielleicht nimmt sie ja unterwegs ein Felsspalte zärtlich auf oder eine Stromschnelle, die sich so schnell öffnet wie Fischkiemen unter Wasser, oder das allgegenwärtige, kalte, kristallreine Lächeln der Luft, die verschwundene Sonne oder das große Nordlicht lassen sie in einen Traum versinken und untergehen. Natürlich sollte sie so etwas nicht denken und sie kommt sich ziemlich gemein dabei vor; also lächelt sie gleich Little Marten an, die von ihrem Gepäck noch tiefer als ein Toboggan in den Schnee gedrückt wird. Nur Weiße machen sich auf solche endlosen, mörderischen Märsche in die lange Dunkelheit hinein. Nur Weißerde-Männer." (S. 184)

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rudy Wiebe twice won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction, first for The Temptations of Big Bear and then again for A Discovery of Strangers. In both novels Wiebe imagines historical events from perspectives not traditionally represented in historical discourse: the trial of Big Bear and the first Franklin expedition, respectively.

I’ve read A Discovery of Strangers three times now, and this last time is the first that I paid much attention. Something about Wiebe lulls me. I suspect the constantly shifting point of view and abrupt changes in chronological sequence are distracting, but his word choice is (oddly) poetic and so, for the first two reads, I lost a lot of the subtleties. This time around I’m reading with intent (take that Atwood), reading with the intent to write twenty odd pages about the book, and so reading with a close and careful eye. It has given me a sinus headache (actually I suspect the winter and germs are responsible for that).

There is much for the attentive eye to notice: the dominance of circles; the repeated use of both ‘discover’ and ‘strangely’ in reference to the ways characters speak; descriptions of the arctic ice as ‘eating’ or ‘consuming’; references to skin - the thickness, colour and texture of it. And so much to do with eating.

I noticed the eating before, but on this read I noticed it in new places. Sex is described as eating, the landscape is described as eating, the English explorers are (of course and always) described as eating, the animals eat, the children eat, the rocks and the forest and the water eats. And people eat one another.

The novel poses several questions directly: what are the explorers looking for? What do they hope to find? And. What are our responsibilities to one another? What does community require?

The answers might be found in the imagery, the symbols, the dialogic and polyphonic structure. Or perhaps there are no direct answers, rather an insistence that we readers ‘eat’ too: the novel, the narrative, and in eating incorporate the voices and this story into ourselves, and perhaps then find something approximating answers - or perhaps just satiation.

[Gail Amendt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rudy Wiebe writes some very good fiction, and this book is no exception, but it was just too hard to read at times. Wiebe's style is complex, and I often found myself re-reading a passage several times, and that gets tiresome after a while. Nonetheless, I did very much enjoy this story of John Franklin's first expedition into the Canadian Arctic. It deals with the interactions, struggles, and misunderstandings between the white expedition members and the Tetsot'ine (Yellowknife) people, in what must have been almost the first contact with whites for the Tetsot'ine. The perceptions of the Tetsot'ine of their white visitors are very insightful and fascinating, as is the arrogant colonial attitude of the British officers. The degree to which the two cultures misunderstand each other is huge, but likely quite accurately portrayed. The story is told in many voices, each in their own very unique style. Some is told in the form of native storytelling in a cramped winter lodge, some as journal entries and letters written by members of Franklin's expedition. Probably the most difficult to follow and poignant was the section narrated by expedition member Robert Hood as his confused mind wanders in the final stages of starvation. The amount of research that went into writing this novel is commendable, and the descriptions of the north are beautiful. I just wish it had been a bit easier to follow, but that is probably my problem, not the author's.

[Linnea · Rating 5 out of 5]

My second read through this novel which trails through the snow-swept Canadian tundra in order to find something never found. I really like this book for all its intricacies, its intelligent references to what could otherwise be quite linear explanations of linear explanations of the Canadian North. I bump it down to four stars, however, because five years after I first read this book, I'm [still and] more unsettled by the gender relations it presents, and cannot decide whether Wiebe is 'telling it like it is,' or whether the nature of historiographic fiction means that one can never really tell it like it is/was, thus making the novel aggressive sexual scenes seem fairly gratuitous. Frankly, I don't know what to do with the rapes, the polygamies, the 'stealing' of women. I figure Wiebe's done his research, but these passages force me, rather uncomfortably, into a place where I cannot seem to decide whether I'm being all too ignorant about a different culture, or being all too aware of my desire to side with a particular ethics on human nature (which sisters actually laugh while discussing sexual preferences in regards to a shared husband?)

In any case, it makes me think. (About the book, not about the possibility of a shared husband.)

[Bill Brydon · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Turning before them, Michel seems suddenly very powerful: so deliberately intense and muscled it is obvious that he could walk wherever he pleased. Perhaps it is because he carries only his bedding and a long rifle with powder and shot — which Lieutenant Franklin has now assigned to him, he says. But beyond specific hunting forays, no voyageur has ever before been permitted a loaded rifle; especially not this one. And even more unbelievably he has brought meat, both a ptarmigan and a hare! For them, who for days now have eaten only bits of boiled leather or painfully scraped-off lichen, burning or cooking that while it somehow remained as repulsively inedible as ever. Hepburn exclaims, gnawing his mouthful of meat, “O God, maybe this one won’t tell lies, like all the others.” Resting, they have continuously discussed food as the hungry will, making sounds to vary the moan of wind among small brush, their tent too thin to be worthy of assault. “If we could see sky,” Hood on his back could still speak with some precision, “we might see … ravens. Ravens always eat.”

[Tony · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can't recall exactly when I finished this book, but it was just before we left to live in New Zealand. I came across it recently and thought to add it to my virtual library. This is the rare book that earns a solid three stars, which is kind of like the kiss of death for any good book. And it is a good book-- interesting historical fiction wrapped in fact, compelling plot with a little romance thrown in. But it never really grabbed me, never became "unputdownable". Three stars means I can't fault the writing, can't fault the story itself, but I was never really engaged.

[Nancy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a hard slog. If the idea was to convey the inability of the Indians and the English to understand each other, it succeeds. If the author wanted to convey the inner feelings and culture of the Yellowknives in 1820, he succeeded. The story failed to engage me, however. I finished because it felt like an important book to read--so literary, so descriptive, but I did not enjoy it. There was no suspense in the outcome, which was foretold early on. The prose got in the way of the story too often.

[Luce Cronin · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great book! The story revolves around the meeting of the men from the Franklin expedition with the Yellowknive (Dene) people in the Northwest Territory Much research has gone into this novel, and Wiebe has given us a beautiful interpretation of what he thought transpired on a personal level. Wiebe writes in an almost mystical manner at times and makes us live the life of the Dene at the time

[Jiajia Chen · Rating 5 out of 5]

The opening catches me with the wild bur serene landscape. I feel I was drawn to that misery, distant and beautiful land. Also with the multi perspective depiction, it leads us to think the images of people in the eyes of animals, of the invaders in the eyes of aboriginals.
It refreshes me and make people to think. For me, it's a great work.

[Jayanti Banerjee · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a detailed interweaving of several sensibilities (officers, conscripted men, voyageurs, and the First Nations people) with all the attendant differences in narrative style. The story is compelling but very hard work. My stars are for how hard I found it, not for how technically good the novel is.

[Andrés]

I tried to like this book, it being an award winner and all. But... I just kept putting it down and not re-opening it. Began it in 1995, and will probably try it again. Maybe. So many books, so little time.

2017.05.30: Gave up. Took to used bookstore instead of packing it for move.

[Jock · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had to start twice. The first time around I put this book aside as too obtuse but returned to it and seemed to find the flow. Written from varied points and worth a look if you are interested in Canadian history. I quite liked it.

[Ambdkerr · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intense read. Purposefully written to disorient the reader, it was definitely a challenge to get through. That being said it is part of an important story illustrating the price the First People paid as the English claimed and settled Canada.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those books that left me feeling "as if the top of my head were taken off." I wasn't sure what world I lived in or how to navigate it when I finished this. Beautiful, disturbing, profoundly asynchronous--I have lived new lives in this novel.

[Patricia Boyle · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did not like this book - the story or the writing style.

[Jane Routley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not always an easy read but memoriable and enriching. Brillant first contact novel.

[martin eden · Rating 5 out of 5]

Based on true events, this book is a mix of love, adventure and dramatic tale. Rudy Wiebe is a great storyteller, I was captivated from the beginning to the very end!

[Dennis Bolen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Okay I know there’s a reference to a Margaret Atwood poem in the first chapter heading, I know his general ideas about our Euro-Aboriginal culture clash has been his major metier throughout (The Temptations of Big Bear, etc.). I know he’s a big-time academic with credentials up the wazoo but this volume, sold in the tens of thousands, will typically be read by only hundreds and understood, if such is possible, by scant dozens. If going out of your way to make Canadian history dull and obscure warrants praise, hail to Mr. Rudy Wiebe, two-time winner of the Governor General’s award for fiction.

It's not as if there’s anything interestingly original here. We have the obligatory pro/con configurations of character among the white and native populations. Generally, the whites are: Eccentric, empirical, imperialist, sexually repressed, naive and violent. The natives are: Practical, spiritual, communal, sexually open, cool and violent. There are numerous attempts to get us into the heads of the characters. With few exemptions I found these unsuccessful, coming as they do from the perspective of a twentieth-century academic attempting to replicate Innu voices from more than a century-and-a-half ago. Get a load of these sentences:

The name of the rapid on the River of Copperwoman silvered with ice so thin that the grayling flicker under it releases Birdseye from her unending woman’s work. She begins to sleep towards (sic) that future.

There is, yes, a plethora of characters, or at least character names, that keeps flying through the toss-off lines like above, never seen before, never seen again, certainly not known or important. They all have voices of their own, of course, though we may not understand them. Maybe they’re accurate, we have no way of knowing. One thing I know for sure, there is no entertainment in this book, no reason to keep reading past the first paragraph that has anything to do with interest, joy, prose agility, or, ironically, discovery.


If it weren’t enough that this pretentious tome is boring, a literal sleeping pill of a book, seemingly designed for Ph.D. students and others with the time or interest in becoming conversant with its tenure-inducing political pedigree, there’s much bad writing to be endured also. Alas, to those faithful who have paid me tribute by their attention in this space before, you’ll know that I’ve often had to lecture on the unfortunate prevalence of the `Really Very Sudden(ly)’ sickness. Well, guess what, Mr. GG 1994 has a particularly virulent strain of the disorder. Too, there’s the distention we struggle through in dealing with what is a strong motif - the woods of the north, olden times, limited resources for dealing with deadly cold and starvation - contrasted to the contemporary narrator.

Oh how I was yearning, part-way through, for a blast of the open literary trail, the narrative freeway of a Cormac McCarthy, or even Mordecai Richler. Someone who doesn’t get all choked up writing history, who knows that its just time past and must be understood in all times and with particular attention to the one being written in. I hardened back to Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West, McCarthy’s put-u-and-shut-up, read-till-you-drop take on Hispanic-Aboriginal objections to the Euro-American southwest imperialism of the mid-19th Century. There was history told in graphic isolation, a cold, raw, telling narrative of folly and violence, salvation and grief, irresistibly present on the page, non-removed by psychological artifice. And you get to know the Indians. Boy, do you ever.

Mr. Richler should especially be invoked in the discussion, the characters of his book Solomon Gursky Was Here, being historical and anthro-sociological descendants and contemporaries of the population Mr. Wiebe is attempting to write about. In vastly more vital fashion, the intricacies of contemporary national econo-politics, social change and the magic survival of an Eskimo culture coalesce to make Gursky a Canadian mythological landmark nowhere near as recognized as such as it should be. And boy do you get to know those Eskimos. You get to know those bootleggers, too, and other white white-collar villains and heroes that, once drawn, are clear and recognizable icons for the changes in our culture, and the historical signposts put up along the way. And we all get entertained, too.
So dammit if you too are planning to leap aboard the great Canadian culture wagon train north and want to write about our forgotten and lost ancient native civilizations, get a good story going, there are plenty if you can’t think one up. Then get a voice or two that works, and talk all you want about how cool the natives were and how uncool the stodgy Europeans were. Just get it said, straight to the mind, because we all want to read about this country without working too hard. That we do every day.

[A.M. Potter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rudy Wiebe won the 1973 Governor-General’s Award for Fiction (Canada) for The Temptations of Big Bear. Long before the advent of movies like Dances with Wolves, Wiebe’s indigenous characters took centre stage. He appropriated a multitude of historical voices, regardless of ethnicity or station in life, and allowed each to tell their own version of events.

Wiebe’s second G-G award-winning novel, A Discovery of Strangers, follows the same general format. The reader views the 1820-21 Franklin Expedition through the eyes of not only the English explorers, but also the Canadian voyagers and Yellowknife natives who made it possible. Much of the story is told from the point-of-view of a young indigenous woman called Greenstockings. Wiebe could be accused of double voice appropriation. He’s a white male who wrote as a female, not to mention an indigenous female.

A Discovery of Strangers is as much a love story as a retelling of history. The beautiful Greenstockings is a man-magnet. One of Franklin’s junior officers, Robert Hood, is besotted by her. Wiebe’s account of their deepening attraction – which finally erupts inside her father’s lodge – is as tender and tragic as a troubadour tale.

A reader cannot help noting the stylistic affinities of Wiebe’s two award-winning novels. Both use similar narrative devices – flashbacks, visionary dreams, multiple points-of-view – as well as similar prose styles. It’s almost as if the author said to himself, Hmm, that worked before. I’ll do it again.

Wiebe’s descriptive passages perfectly capture the sub-Arctic terrain, largely harsh and unforgiving in the eyes of the whites, no less harsh in the eyes of the Yellowknife, yet also pregnant with life and joy. We read of eerie ice caves, the fickle migrations of the caribou, and the endless threat of starvation. We enter the past. It may be long-lost but, in Wiebe’s hands, it is also eternally-present.

Postscript, 2021:

When A Discovery of Strangers was published (1994), some people weren’t happy with Wiebe’s double voice appropriation, that is, writing from the point-of-view (POV) of both an indigenous person and a female. It’s no easy task for a male to write convincingly as a female, let alone for a white male to write as an indigenous female. However, Wiebe succeeded. Stylistically.

As to being politically correct, in 2021 many more people challenge Wiebe’s voice appropriation than twenty-five-plus years ago. For the most part today, voice appropriation is frowned upon. A white male like me shouldn’t write from the POV of an indigenous person. I also shouldn’t write from the POV of a female. But I do. The protagonist and sole narrator of my North Noir detective series is a female, Eva Naslund, a Swedish-Scottish Canadian.

Why do I use a female narrator? The answer is not simple. I understand that, for some people, it’s not politically correct. I understand that I can’t think or feel exactly like a female. {Incidentally, it seems to be OK for females to use male POVs. For example, in the mystery genre, Louise Penny’s protagonist is Armand Gamache, and then there’s Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot.} Despite the recent voice appropriation furor, I persist. While I’m a supposedly honorable person (according to friends, and I don’t even pay them), I’m not always politically correct. I don’t think anyone is. I also persist because I write fiction. Works of imagination.

My final spiel: I don’t care what narrative voice(s) you use. Write as a Purple Martian who’s in love with non-gender-specific star dust. If your POV is convincing, I’ll read it.

[Alex Handyside · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sorry: I gave it until page 80 to impress me but it didn't.
2.5 stars.
I had to double-check the author's bio, because it's written like a bad translation into English. I had to re-read so many sentences because they didn't make sense to my addled brain. I could appreciate this was two cultures being introduced to reach other but it simply didn't flow.
I wanted to finish the book - it's an interesting story - but the language and sentence structure made it too difficult to follow, and thus, impossible to enjoy. There are too many unread books to be enjoyed to suffer through an unenjoyable one. Bye.

[Marla · Rating 5 out of 5]

CBC Proud to be Canadian booklist

This book mesmerized me. The weaving of the historical narrative of the Franklin overland expedition into a fictional telling of that first contact offers more perspectives than the dusty old nautical journals of These English.

[LeAnna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much easier to read once one becomes familiar with the Coppermine Expedition. Wiebe’s narrative shifts effortlessly between voices and perspectives and time, which can be somewhat confusing without the wider context.

[Maria · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this one over ten years ago. I remember really enjoying it.

[Nathie with an H]

Dnf

Literally I don't care if I dissapoint my Prof at this point because there's no way imma push through the second half of this :')
Life is to preachous for that👍