The intoxicating novel of a mixed-race, French-speaking America.
Sainte-Anne-des-Chênes, Manitoba. Richard learns that his great-uncle Alfred lies between life and death in the St. Boniface hospital. This tragedy leads the young man to revisit the past of his Métis family, of which Alfred was the last surviving member. Beneath the fragile grandeur of a mythology rich in outbursts and hangovers lies a wound. The shame of speaking Mitchif and French, of having learned these languages in secret, but also the pain of being the heir to a tragic native history, which saw its claims bent under colonial violence, its culture minoritized and its lands stolen. Now, it may well be that the family land has been dishonestly sold off by old Gauthier. This is what Richard suspects, and he wants to find out for sure, if only to restore his pride in beautiful Becky.
With an acute sense of storytelling, Matthew Tétreault plunges us into the heart of a fascinating and little-known fresco, the Métis history of Canada, still alive and far from over.
