So, it's been a while since I've blogged, but it's also been a while since I've finished a book, which will be especially evident when I return this one, The Champlain Road by Franklin D. McDowell. It won the GG in 1939, and this copy that I just finished last night(finally!) was from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. It was due June 13th, and what is the date today? July 1. I am charged 25 cents a day for overdue fines. I'm not excited about getting the final tally.:( The Champlain Road ended up being not too bad, although it was certainly boring for a lot of the time, until about the last 100 pages. Although that could have been because I was compelled to finish it on my days off this week so that I could return it. I'm in library hell right now! I have another book that I just started called Little Man which won the GG in 1942, and it's due TODAY at the library. It is from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I have my first book club meeting next Monday(in 6 days!) and I haven't read that book either. Not to mention the scads of other books taking up space in Keren's closet that have various due dates. All of this put wicked pressure on me to finish The Champlain Road. I was actually a bit dismayed, too, because my parents decided to come, for the first time in over 3 years, to visit and I'm so inundated with the books that I really just wanted to spend the weekend reading. But, I finished it...And now another one is crossed off the list. The Champlain Road is one of the books on the GG list that I had a really hard time finding out anything about it. There are quite a few of the early winners that there is NO information about at all, except that they won the award in a particular year. I finally found something on the book buried in someone's thesis on someone else. I hit Ctrl+F to get at it in the University of New Brunswick student's paper. I think it's interesting, and also somewhat sad that there are so many of these books that just get forgotten. The Champlain Road was kind of on the boring side, but it made some interesting points, and referenced a time in history that we definitely don't talk about much. The book takes place for the most part in between the years of 1648 and 1650, when the Iroquois extermination of the Hurons was at its peak to final conclusion. I know nothing about any of the Native Americans and their relations at this time and any time we spent on this in history class growing up was focused on the U.S. relations with the Native Americans, not the Canadian. The title of the book, The Champlain Road comes from the name of a "road" about 700 miles long of waterways and portages that Samuel de Champlain used to go from New France to Huronia in 1615. It was the northernmost passage of three routes and by the time the book opens, it has been all but closed off by the Iroquois. The back story on the fight between the Iroquois and the Hurons is that the Hurons used to be part of the Iroquois nation(what is now New York State is for the most part where the Iroquois lived, the Hurons lived up by Georgian bay in what is now Simcoe County, Ontario.), but they chose to ally with the French who came as missionaries to their land and trade with them. The French began to convert them to Catholicism and the Hurons also became wealthier because of the lucrativeness of the fur trade that the French were engaging with them. The Iroquois were pissed off and thus started war on the Iroquois. The book takes place long after this war has begun and focuses on the Frenchmen, for the most part priests, but also one or two soldiers or traders, who are trying to preserve the Huron people and their way of life, in the face of almost certain extermination. What amazed me were these missionary priests who came from France to the New World completely sold on the fact that they would become martyrs for the cause, several of course did. It is their passion for God and their passion towards the safety and health of the Natives that is heartbreaking in this book, as they systematically are slaughtered or burned at the stake or tortured and then meeting these fates, all the while praying to God for the salvation of the Huron people. Then there are the civilians, Godfrey Bethune, a soldier in New France who is stationed with troops in Huronia(Ouendake)to defend Fort Ste. Marie against Iroquois invasion. He is looking for a seigneury, but he befriends the priests and the Hurons and lives amongst them. Diana Woodville is the clear heroine, named Hinonaia, by the Hurons, or Little Thunder, she was captured by the Iroquois as a young child and they, believing she was the descendant of one of their gods, would never trade her back to white people, no matter what the price offered. It is her defect to the Huron people, to live with Godfrey at Fort Ste. Marie, that eventually gives them some victory. She escapes to no longer be part of that Iroquois world, to no longer be the goddess behind battle, but creates much dissension in the Huron camp because of Arakoua, a Native princess who sees Diana as stealing her man Godfrey's heart after Diana rescued him from the Iroquois camp and ran away with him. Diana has to go to war against the Iroquois herself to prove where her loyalties lie, and as well, she provides the true insight into the minds of the Iroquois warriors that hitherto the Hurons and French have not had. It finally, though it is the evening of war, rapidly approaching the end, gives them a leg up in battle. Diana and Godfrey fall in love because of or in spite of all of this too, which is sweet as it is condoned by the priests who witness their passion for the people that they all share. A couple of really great quotes from the end stood out: "Diana looked at the grey faces. 'Ahouendoe is behind us, Father. It is a day that is gone.' 'The past is that which is part of us. It is something peculiarly our own. It makes us what we are,' Father Ragueneau admonished her. 'And what we shall be in the days to come,' Father Le Mercier added. 'If there were no living past, my daughter, there could be no true religion.'" (309) The other quote from the book that I thought was interesting, may be an explanation for why there is a cross sitting on top of Mount Royal in the city of Montreal...:) "The voyageurs skirted the Island of Montreal to sight a low group of buildings on the flatlands by the river, with Mount Royal rising majestically in the background, its tree-clad heights surmounted by a great white cross. Godfrey pointed it out to Diana. 'That was carried up by Maisonneuve[governor of New France] less than a year ago. The river overflowed and threatened to sweep away the fort. He vowed that if the waters receded without doing further damage he would carry that cross himself up the mountain and plant it there. The river fell back and he carried out his vow.'" (316) There is still a cross(an electric one) on top of Mount Royal in Montreal to this day. This book was interesting in that it filled in some gaps in history that I knew nothing about, and the author in this "Huronian edition" which was published in 1949 talks about what has been excavated in terms of old Forts from this era, especially since the book was published and created interest in this area of Western Ontario. This is an era of history that should not have been forgotten(as no history should be forgotten)and it is a pity nothing can be found about this book. It wasn't always super interesting, but it values a part of history that made a huge difference in the making of the Canadian nation. GGs-37, PPs-42.