A yarn to rival the best of them, a big fat whopper of a tall tale that bounces around from provincial Rivière-du-Loup in 1919 to Nagasaki, 1990s Berlin, Rome, and beyond. Funny, touching, and unpredictable, this is the story of a century—long and glorious, stuffed full of parallels, repeating motifs, and unforgettable characters—with the passion and plotting of a modern-day Tosca. A Canadian fiction bestseller (November-December 2018) Best Canadian Fiction of 2018 – Top 25 Books, CBC Book...

Rosa Ost grows up in Notre-Dame-du-Cachalot, a tiny village at the end of the world, where two industries are king: paper and Boredom. The only daughter of Terese Ost (a fair-to-middling trade unionist and a first-rate Scrabble player), the fate that befalls Rosa is the focus of this tale of long journeys and longer lives, of impossible deaths, unwavering prophecies, and unsettling dreams as she leaves her village for Montreal on a quest to summon the westerly wind that has proved so vital...

Courage, diplomacy, love, and conspiracy make for an action-packed adventure in a little-known past. This third instalment of the series continues Radisson’s adventures with the Jesuits and the Iroquois. Mastering the Iroquois language and customs, Radisson leads a mission of French traders and Jesuits to Onondaga in an attempt to build alliances and trade for much-prized furs. But it quickly becomes apparent that the Iroquois are bitterly divided over whether or not to welcome the French ...

Nadia Comaneci’s gold-medal performance at the Olympic Games in Montreal is the starting point for a whole new generation. Eric Dupont watches the performance on TV, mesmerized. The son of a police officer (Henry VIII) and a professional cook—as he likes to remind us—he grows up in the depths of the Quebec countryside with a new address for almost every birthday and little but memories of his mother to hang onto. His parents have divorced, and the novel’s narrator relates his childhood, co...

It is 1963, Jean-Yves Soucy is 18 and looking for a summer job. He dreams of being a fire warden scanning the boreal forest from a fire tower. But to his dismay he is sent to an equipment depot somewhere between Val-d’Or and Chibougamau in Northern Quebec. His disappointment vanishes when he learns that the depot is located near a Cree community and that he will have two Cree guides, including a man named William Saganash, and his work will involve canoeing through the lakes and rivers of ...

It’s a long way from a basement apartment in a Montréal suburb to a new life on a fictional planet, but that’s the destination our unnamed narrator has set his sights on, bringing readers with him on an off-beat and often hilarious journey.Along the way, he writes poems, buys groceries at the dollar store and earns minimum wage at a dead-end supermarket job. In between treatments for his cystic fibrosis and the constant drip-drip-drip of disappointment, he dreams of a new life on T...

Émile Claudel is no ordinary child. Only months after his birth, following the liberation of France in 1945, he can already chatter away in several languages, much to his mother’s frustration. Nicknamed the Little Fox for his appearance, Émile is born into a loveless home, where patience is in short supply. Abandoned by his family, he struggles to find a place in society. This deftly written coming-of-age novel follows Émile on his journey toward adulthood, as his country moves away from a...

Though both parents were alive, Richard and his four brothers lived in an orphanage for five years! It was in 1959, five floors of dormitories at fifty children a floor, with nuns’ cells on each floor. Richard recalls that, “as in all concentration-camp systems, daily life is dull and repetitive.” Some get up, make their beds, say their prayers, while others line up for the strap. It’s just routine. Sometimes for some people it’s fun, or at least tolerable. For others, it is unbearable. Bu...

fter spending two years with his new Iroquois family as described in Volume 1, Pierre-Esprit Radisson escapes and sails across the Atlantic to Holland before boarding ship to head down the west coast of France. Using his wits and the skills picked up in the New World, he makes his way up the Loire and arrives in Paris hoping to find his mother. But war for the succession of the king of France has razed the faubourg where he had lived with his family. What has happened to his mother? Obsess...

Spring 1651: a young man from Paris lands in Trois-Rivières on the St. Lawrence River. Within weeks, the course of his life changes drastically when Iroquois braves capture him. Pierre-Esprit Radisson, then 15 years old, begins a new life. Canoeing rivers and lakes and portaging over mountains, Radisson’s captors take him to distant lands where first they torture him and adopt him as their brother. Radisson then becomes the Iroquois Orinha, goes to war with his new brothers, and learns the...

Philippe is a creature of habit now, a man of routine. Trapped in an uninspiring job, with a wife, two children, and an uneventful life in the suburbs of Montreal, his wild student days spent chasing neo-Nazis across Europe was a lifetime ago. Until a ghost from the past turns up on his doorstep. Old friend Robert Moranowitz convinces Philippe to return to his activist ways, leaving everything behind to hunt down a dangerous band of white supremacists.But why are Philippe and Mora ...

“Jean-Yves Soucy’s story and encounter with my Dad provides a charming glimpse into a changing world, for us all.” Romeo Saganash It’s 1963, Jean-Yves Soucy is 18 and dreams of being a fire warden scanning the boreal forest from a fire tower. But he ends up at an equipment depot between Val-d’Or and Chibougamau. To his delight, he is located near the Cree community of Wawanipi. With two Cree guides, including a man named William Saganash, he will be canoeing through the lakes and rivers of...