Synopses & Reviews
With the same panoramic vision and mythic sensibility he brought to The Ice-Shirt, William T. Vollmann continues his hugely original fictional history of the clash of Indians and Europeans in the New World. It is 400 years ago, and the "Black Gowns," French Jesuit priests, are beginning their descent into the forests of Canada, eagerly seeking to convert the Huron and courting martyrdom at the hands of the rival Iroquois. Through the eyes of these vastly different peoples particularly through those of the grimly pious Father Jean de Brebeuf and the Indian prophetess Born Underwater Vollmann reconstructs America's past as tragedy, nightmare, and bloody spectacle. In the process, he does nothing less than reinvent the American novel as well.
Review
"Vast and vivid as Canada itself, mingling the cold, deep waters of history with the present, and quixotic and ironic to its core. An immensely rewarding saga." Kirkus Reviews
About the Author
William T. Vollmann is the author of eight novels, three collections of stories, a memoir, and Rising Up and Rising Down, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction. Vollman's writing has been published in The New Yorker, Harper's, The Paris Review, Esquire, Conjunctions, Granta, and many other magazines. He lives in California.