The Trail Of The Conestoga

One item on my list for my "Year Of Reading Ambitiously" is "a book that takes place in your hometown."  I had to stretch a little bit to find something that qualified, but I figured a book set in the earliest days of Waterloo County was close enough!

Were it not my self-assigned "required reading," I may never have picked this book up, but I'm glad I did.  The Trail of the Conestoga by Mabel Dunham tells the story of the migration of Mennonites from Pennsylvania to what is now Waterloo County in the early 1800s.

It was the author's bio on the back cover that caught my attention.  Mabel Dunham was a librarian of the KPL and started the children's section there.  She was the first president of The Canadian Federation of University Women, and the particular edition of the book I bought was published to mark the 50th anniversary of the KW chapter.

There was something undeniably 1940s Canadian about this novel.  Beyond its musty smell, it's packed with little history lessons thinly disguised as back-and-forth banter between characters ("Why, it's Isaac Brock!" / "Who's that?") and morality tales spun so thick you trip over them.  Dunham's choice to focus on the Mennonites' reasons for and history as conscientious objectors would have been an interesting and bold addition to a novel first published in 1942, right in the thick of the second World War.  She consistently portrays females as strong, wise, and patient and takes a passive-aggressive approach to the issue of gender roles.  (Love this gem: "...she pressed her lips together and held her peace.  To begin a conversation was a privilege she usually accorded her husband, whom the good St. Paul had set up in some uninspired moment as the head of the household.  She was quite satisified so long as she had the last word."

This book is charming.  I was thinking about recommending it as a title for my book club to consider.  Unfortunately, it's not in print anymore.  A quick search on amazon shows that used copies are selling for a pretty penny.  (This makes me all the more proud of my $2.00 purchase from none other than the MCC's Thrift on Kent!)  So I guess I'll just offer up this book on loan for anyone who wants to read it.  I think librarian/author Mabel Dunham would approve.

I Read Canada Reads

I spent much of my Christmas holidays reading.  That is to say, I read when I wasn't crocheting or watching Netflix or both.  Basically, I hibernated for two weeks.  And it was amazing.  And I miss it already.

Digging into the Canada Reads books has become my winter mission.  I started with Esi Edugyan's Half-Blood Blues.

This is a fascinating story that dropped me into a world I didn't know existed and had never even considered: the Jazz scene in Germany during the Nazi regime.  It's a complicated emotional portrayal of guilt and regret from a character who was ultimately powerless, but who spends his life blaming himself for what he should have done.

As well-crafted (and well-researched) a novel as it may be, the only thing Canadian about this book is its author.  Also, it already won the Giller Prize in 2011 and was a finalist for the GGs and the Man Booker.  I kind of feel like this book has already received its public accolades.  So while it's a great book, it's not the underdog I'm hoping to cheer for in this year's Canada Reads competition.

Shelagh Rogers did a great interview with Esi Edugyan for her radio show, "The Next Chapter" and it provided some great aural distraction while I did several loads of laundry one day.

After Half-Blood Blues, I decided to tackle The Orenda.  I've never read anything by Joseph Boyden, but I feel like his books follow me around.  I find them on tables in bookstores with signage like, "The Best Novels You've Never Read."  The Orenda has also received a lot of press coverage, so I decided to give it a go.

I was glad I warmed up with Half-Blood Blues: compared to Edugyan's novel, The Orenda is a brick.  This novel is narrated by three characters: a Jesuit priest, a Huron warrior, and a young aboriginal woman taken from another village who becomes the warrior's 'adopted' daughter.  It was difficult to ease into--kind of like a fast-paced conversation that began without you--but once the narrators' stories began to intertwine, it was difficult to set the book down.  (Bonus: You can build some good muscles with this one!  It's large, available only in heavy hardcover, and hard to quit!)

A review from Quill and Quire comments on The Orenda's "blockbuster feel," adding, "The Orenda will be this year's Book of Negros, I think."  We could definitely do worse for entertaining, Canadian historical fiction!

Entertaining as it may be, it's definitely not fluff.  One impactful episode in the novel occurs when the priest loses the wampum that the warrior was to present to another tribe as part of a peace negotiation.  He bemoans: 

• "I have lost my people's story, my gift to the ones who are our enemy, in the hope of changing that course." (p. 108)

This implies that Canadian history played out the way it did because the stories of certain peoples were lost or dismissed.  (Yikes.  This entry is starting to sound like a high school essay.)

Where Boyden's novel differs from many of the aboriginal themed/flavoured/inspired novels that I have read (and they are a genre of personal interest...I have read many!) is that the picture he paints of aboriginal history is much more brutal and complicated than the peaceful, idealistic scene that is typical.  I will be very interested to hear the commentary that accompanies this novel in the Canada Reads debates.  I'm hoping this book makes it to the final rounds because I know it will generate great discussion.

I guess I should stop here.  More Canada Reads comments to come.