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Loading... River thieves (original 2001; edition 2003)by Michael Crummey
Work InformationRiver Thieves by Michael Crummey (2001)
   No current Talk conversations about this book.   ) Romonko | Jan 12, 2024 |  Crummey has a knack for vividly describing the rugged wilderness. “The coves and stark headlands, the sprawling stands of spruce so deeply green they are almost black. The mountain alder, the tuckamore and deer moss. The lakes and ponds of the interior as delicately interconnected as the organs of an animal’s body, the rivers bleeding from their old wounds along the coast into the sea.” He brings back a time and place when a diverse group of settlers coexisted with the Beothuk, just before they were extinguished as a people. The relationships among the characters are well-crafted. John Sr. is portrayed as hostile to the Beothuk, while his son is compassionate. Buchan zealously enforces British law. Cassie is a survivor of a difficult upbringing. The book portrays the conflicts between the settlers and native people. I particularly appreciated the way Crummey combined the historical story with adversarial tensions among the protagonists. It is a story of misunderstandings, miscommunications, cultural differences, and loss of a way of life. (  ) Castlelass | Oct 30, 2022 | ) RonCrouch | Mar 26, 2022 | This is a compelling story which effortless draws you into the world of 19th century Newfoundland, and a British naval officer who is under orders to establish contact with the ever-diminishing Beothuk people. Add into that mix colonial ignorance and hatred, cultural misunderstanding and miscommunication, combined wild frontier justice, and you have a complex narrative which Crummey handles with a deft touch, elegant prose, and ambiguous, even ambivalent fatalism. Crummey creates unique and well-defined characters, each speaking from pages as real people. The plot is tight, the dialogue sharp. Even though this is not a piece of genre fiction which could loosely be described as thriller, it is, in fact, a page-turner of the best kind. There is nothing templated here. It's all just very elegant, excellent writing, and one hell of a good story. Highly recommended. ( ) fiverivers | Apr 20, 2021 | As with any good novel, the real magic lies in the sub-plots revolving around the main characters, and the development of these secrets into interconnecting threads. Crummey develops strong characters and evocative landscapes, and if you enjoy novels set in the days of the early North American settlers this will surely be a winner. There was a familiarity to this novel, and I think many other novelists have also successfully written this type of book, but it was enjoyable nonetheless (although perhaps slightly longer than it needed to be). I just wish he had left out the two or three pages of sex he weaved in, which definitely would be contenders for the Bad Sex in Literature Award. It seemed out of keeping with the rest of the novel and felt uncomfortably cringey - like reading an account of your parents' sex life (sorry to create any unwanted mental images there, folks). 3.5 stars - excellently written and a fabulous plot, but for some reason I laboured over this a bit at times. I think this was more a reflection of my reading mood rather than the novel, so don't let my score put you off. (  ) AlisonY | Oct 16, 2019 | no reviews | add a review
AwardsNotable Lists
"An impressive first novel" of a crisis between natives and colonists in Newfoundland, based on historical events (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). In 1810, David Buchan, a naval officer, arrives in the Bay of Exploits with orders to establish contact with the Beothuk, or "Red Indians," the aboriginal inhabitants of Newfoundland, who are facing extinction. When Buchan approaches the area's most influential white settlers, the Peytons, for advice and assistance, he enters a shadowy world of allegiances and old grudges that he can only dimly apprehend. His closest ally, John Peyton Jr., maintains an uneasy balance between duty to his father--a domineering patriarch with a reputation as a ruthless persecutor of the Beothuk--and his troubled conscience. Cassie, the fiercely self-reliant and secretive woman who keeps the family house, walks a precarious line of her own between the unspoken but obvious hopes of the younger Peyton, her loyalty to John Senior, and a steadfast refusal to compromise her independence. When Buchan's peace expedition into "Indian country" goes awry, the rift between father and son deepens and begins to divide those closest to them. Years later, when a second expedition to the Beothuk's winter camp mounted by the Peytons leads to the kidnapping of an Indian woman and the murder of her husband, Buchan returns to investigate. As the officer attempts to uncover what really happened at the Red Indian's lake, the delicate web of obligation and debt that holds together the Peyton household--and the community of settlers on the northeastern shore--slowly unravels. The tragedy of miscommunication and loss among these colonists living in a harsh environment in a crude, violent age prefigures and in some sense is seen as the cause of the more profound loss, that of an entire people. An enthralling story of great passion and suspense, vividly set in the stark Newfoundland landscape and driven by an extraordinary cast of characters, River Thieves captures both the vast sweep of history and the intimate lives of those caught in its wake. No library descriptions found. |
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.73)
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