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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
wonderful detail but doesn't always hold attention, September 8, 2004
Voyageurs is set during the time of the War of 1812 on the then hotly contested border between Canada and America. Mark Greenhow is a young English Quaker whose sister Rachel left to minister in Canada and ended up marrying outside the faith and thus being disowned by her religion, if not her family. When Mark's family receives a letter from her husband (a fur trapper agent named Alan Mackenzie) that Rachel was lost in the wilderness after wandering off desolate at the loss of their first child, he decides to go to Canada and search for her. In simple terms, the book is the story of his quest to do so: his journey to Canada, his joining Mackenzie and Loic (half Indian half European) to travel far into the wild border area, and his return, all of this set against the backdrop of gathering war among Canada, America, and the Native Americans who may fight on either side.
The book, of course, is not so simple. Structurally, it is a story within a story within a story as the major narrative is supposed to be Mark's journal "discovered" by the modern day author who has had it published. The main story it is told as a long flashback as an older, wiser Mark reflects in his journal on his long-ago journey. While this technique allows for more sophisticated language and references, and also for occasional bits of actual wisdom, in general it doesn't add much to the work as a whole. The use of footnotes, some quite lengthy, slows the book down quite a bit in places and though several of the notes are small gems of tone and characterization, in general the payoff is not worth the interruption or the extra complication.
Elphinstone does a better job of complicating matters via setting and especially through the choice of religion. It is made clear early on that Mark is conflicted at times with his religions pacifism, and even before he leaves for Canada we learn of several times where he mentally or actually failed to hold up to the standard of peace set by his community. His journey, set as it is in a time of war, will further confuse him, forcing him to choose again and again whether to hold steady to the Quaker path. In the end, he must decide just who he is. This conflict, as mentioned, is set up early in the book, and is a constant source of tension throughout. It is also nicely paralleled by other elements in the book: the physical setting, a border in the midst of deciding what it is or who it belongs to; two countries deciding what their relationship will be; a multitude of cultures deciding how they will interact, a number of characters of mixed race; a number of characters who must decide to what and to whom their loyalties lie, etc. This sense of identity conflict is perhaps the best part of the book.
If it isn't the best part, the detailed setting surely is. Elphinstone does a masterful job of detailing life during this time and in this place and Mark's trips from settlement to settlement and camp to camp are languorous descriptions of the natural surroundings and the cultural ways of life of trappers, settlers, and Native Americans. I have to admit that at times I found the detail a bit too overdone, not in any given section but overall. Whereas each section was wonderfully written and each area wonderfully evoked, the book did slow down by the middle to latter part and I found myself having to resist the temptation to skim. The book probably would have been better served losing 50-100 pages.
The very end is a bit anti-climatic but the resolution regarding Rachel was, without giving anything away, nicely and originally handled, avoiding cliche, sentimentalism, or predictability.
A leaner book, one that cut down a bit on some of the description and cut out or cut severely the older Mark sections (not to mention the journal's "discoverer") and the book would have rated a strong four. With the somewhat extraneous structure and the sometimes slow pacing, it drops down, though still recommended for its detail, its thematic structure, and the voice of its main character.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A brother's Love or Quakers aren't wimps, February 10, 2004
In a magazine some actor whose name I can't remember or spell raved about this book. It deals with Mark Greenhow and a letter that arrives from Canada to his home in England. It is about his missionary sister Rachel whom has married out of the Quaker order, has lost a baby, and has wandered off by herself on a small island on Lake Huron. Red eyed and shaken Mark's parent's want to know what happened and who is this man who wrote the letter, who now says that he tried to search for Rachel but had to return to his post at the North West Company.The discriptions and research in this book are bang on, right down to the fact that it is improper to tell stories around the camp fire in summer about Nanubushu - the great Indian spirit or Manitou.My favourite parts are when Mark is on the boat coming over to Canada the year is 1810 and he is wet and cold huddled under his blanket when he throws it off to holler over the side of the boat at his sister Rachel as to why and yet again she drags him into her bad news. Mark gets to learn how to paddle in a Voyageurs canoe and get used to the traders and trappers. There are footnotes at the bottom of some of the pages explaining certain things that went on and at times you have to remind yourself that this story is fiction. Canada is gearing up for war with the States and as Quakers it is hard to pass up arms when eveyone around you isn't. As they (Quakers) have vowed never to bear arms against any man this proves difficult to explain to the average gun carrying Joe.Mark is a believable character and one I'll miss till I read the book again.Yes, Mark meets the man - Rachel's husband but at times Mark is having such an adventure that you forget why he came to Canada in the first place. As to the rest well order it from Amazon and find out you won't be disappointed.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A compelling story of furs, love and war in colonial Canada!, August 4, 2005
In the early years of the nineteenth century, life in the harsh, northern wilderness of Upper and Lower Canada is a mentally and physically demanding pioneering existence made even more difficult and tenuous by the politics of the War of 1812. Rachel Greenhow, a young Quaker from Scotland responds to her calling as a missionary by emigrating to Canada and ministering to the early settlers in Ontario, the voyageurs of the North West Company and the aboriginal native tribes along the fur trade routes between Montreal and Michilimackinac. The realities of pioneer life in the Canadian boreal forest and her faith come into conflict as she falls in love with Mark Mackenzie, a fur trade agent, and marries outside the Society of Friends. Despondent over the loss of her first child and her expulsion from the Society because of her marriage, she wanders into the forest on an island in northern Lake Michigan and disappears without a trace.
One might be forgiven for cracking open this novel expecting adventure, a swashbuckling account of a fast-paced rescue and tales of derring-do! In fact, it is anything but! Voyageurs is an exquisitely detailed first person account of Mark Greenhow's two year search for his lost sister with the assistance of Loic Kerners, a mixed breed outdoorsman of Indian and Scottish parents, and Alan Mackenzie, Rachel's husband and agent provocateur under direct orders from General Sir Isaac Brock to recruit native support for Canada inside US territory. While it is certainly not languid or plodding, the pacing of the novel and the enormous volume of the detail might be described as at once overwhelming and tortuous as well as frightening and breathtaking, an apt metaphor for the monumental difficulties that a voyageur of the North West Company might face in his every day working life and the compelling setting in which the story takes place - waterfalls and rapids; excruciating clouds of mosquitoes or black flies; extreme temperature swings; backbreaking 90 to 100 pound loads hauled over strenuous ankle-breaking portages; the open water of the Great Lakes that might better be described as inland oceans when observed from the perspective of a canoe; changeable unpredictable weather; the dumb-founding athleticism of ten to twelve men paddling in perfect synchrony at 50 strokes per minute for hours on end singing, if you please, to provide a rhythm and take their minds off the numbing pain in their backs and shoulders.
Voyageurs is peppered throughout with themes of conflict and tension - the yet to be formed Canada versus a newly established US flexing its muscles at only loosely defined borders; a corporate turf war between the North West and the South West fur companies; Quaker moral standards and resolute strictures against alcohol, weapons, licentiousness and fighting constantly under assault by the exigencies of frontier living and simply staying alive in the context of war; European culture versus aboriginal culture; aboriginal peoples already dealing with the broken promises of treaties with the white man; Mark's ongoing moral dilemma of traveling and living with Alan who clearly lives by a code of conduct virtually anathema to the rules of the Society of Friends.
The ending comes, in a sense, as an anti-climax. While Rachel's life is resolved in a satisfying, realistic and almost fatalistic fashion, there are readers that will be disappointed by the fact that there is no story book romanticism or heart-rending emotion in Elphinstone's resolution of Mark's exhausting search. She has caught us completely unawares at the end of the novel leaving Mark's journal to simply come to a halt with a series of blank pages. Elphinstone has demonstrated very clearly that, while any individual's life may be described in whole or in part and may even reach a completion of sorts, the conflicts, tensions, issues and events around us usually unfold without any particular reference to us as individuals and will probably continue after we leave the scene - regardless of the form that departure might take!
Two thumbs up for a unique story about the fur trade in colonial Canada!
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