Here, finally, her story can turn to one of growth and redemption rather than instinct and fear. When Mary stops running, she finds herself in a tiny mining town with more than its share of misfits, from the minister to the apothecary to the occasional visitor. She feels she is slowly going mad, and indeed it is impossible to tell at times what is really happening and what is a hallucination.Īdamson successfully uses this technique to reveal much of Mary’s inner self and back story, combining background on the stifling and absurd treatment of women at the time with the reality and dangers of backwoods life. John is abusive and a liar, furthering Mary’s sense of being unloved. When John Boulton appears at a party, clearly seeking a wife, she is drawn to him as a fellow outsider with only this in common they are married, and she moves with him to his shack deep in the forest. A shy child whose mother died from a drawn-out illness, Mary yearns to be loved but is ignored by her grieving father and pious grandmother. Her full story is revealed over the course of the novel through her encounters with other outlaws and social and political misfits.

“The widow,” as she is called throughout most of the book, is Mary Boulton, who killed her husband and is being sought by his twin brothers, who are big, burly, and mean men set on revenge. Pierre Talon's remarkable adventure will captivate young readers.This captivating story opens with a 19-year-old widow running for her life through the woods of western Canada, sometime in the early 20th century. Based on actual historical figures and events, this is a gripping survival story filled with fast friendships and cruel betrayals, cowardice and greed, courage and generosity. But eventually he must choose between embracing the Hasinai ways forever or risking his life to hold onto his European identity and family responsibilities. It is there that Pierre becomes a man, learning to hunt and fish, to swim, work the fields and build houses. To his surprise, he finds that the Hasinai have a well-ordered, prosperous, and peaceful community. Pierrre falls deathly ill, and into the hands of the Hasinai Indians. But the expedition to relocate the Mississippi River unravels when La Salle and his closest aides are murdered. When eleven-year-old Pierre Talon, son of a French Canadian Voyageur, sets out in 1684 on what became the last, ill-fated expedition of the great French explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, he hopes to find help for his family, who are struggling in a settlement decimated by hunger, ilness, and Indian attacks.

The Crimson Cap by Ellen Howard