by Annie Proulx
Rating: 4.00 (1 ratings)
First published 2016
René Sel and Charles Duquet step off the boat in late seventeenth century New France with nothing but debt. Both men owe three years of labor to a seigneur in exchange for land. They become barkskins, woodcutters who clear the endless forest. René endures brutal conditions, marries a Mi'kmaw woman by force, and watches his mixed descendants struggle between two hostile worlds. Duquet takes a different path. He flees his contract, trades furs, and builds a timber empire through cunning and cruelty. Proulx follows both bloodlines across three hundred years as they spread from North America to Europe, China, and New Zealand. The families face Indian raids, disease, accidents, and rival traders seeking revenge. Generation after generation strips the forest bare, treating trees as limitless bounty. The descendants carry forward this cycle of exploitation until the modern era, when the last characters confront what their ancestors refused to see: the land they plundered may not survive.
Genres: american-fiction, historical-fiction, 20th-century, adventure, 21st-century, 19th-century
Vibes: atmospheric, emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: family-legacy, generational-saga
Setting: New France, North America, Europe, China, New Zealand
Period: Late 17th Century, 300 Years
717 pages · Hardcover · Scribner
Content warnings: colonialism