Britain occupied the French colony of Acadia (roughly corresponding to the modern Maritime provinces and eastern Maine) during the North American wars of the mid-18th century. We learnt a lot about Wolfe and the Heights of Abraham in our school history, but not so much about the way most of the French settlers in Acadia were forcibly deported around 1755. An estimated 11,500 people — most of them families who had been farming and fishing there for over a century — were displaced to the southern colonies or the Caribbean, and up to half of them are thought to have died by accident, disease or starvation. Many of the survivors ultimately settled in Louisiana, where their descendants turned "Acadian" into "Cajun".

Others found their way back to Canada "by the back door", and it's this return from exile, the foundation of the present-day French-speaking communities in places like New Brunswick, that Maillet documents in her famous novel, which won her the Prix Goncourt in 1979.

The Acadian widow Pélagie has worked for fifteen years in Georgia to earn the money she needs to buy a cart and a team of oxen to take her family back to the North. They face endless difficulties during what turns into a ten-year journey, picking up numerous other exiled Acadians as they go, and Pélagie becomes a kind of Moses leading her people to the promised land.

Maillet gives the story a deliberately epic quality, rooted in an oral tradition, by reporting it to us as told around the hearth by people three generations after Pélagie and her companions, traditional storytellers who are Maillet's own direct ancestors. Pélagie's companions are straight out of the quest-story tradition: the wise old storyteller, the traditional healer/midwife, the intrepid young hero, the fey young girl, the (ghostly?) sea captain who turns up in moments of crisis, the giant (Rabelais is constantly hovering around in the background, not surprising given that many of the Acadians came from Poitou in the early 17th century), etc. But they are never just stock types: in their truculent arguments and witty dialogue, they come over as fresh and very individual, as does Pélagie with her mix of spiritual leader, Mother Courage and all-too-human middle-aged woman.

All the dialogue is in Acadian dialect, with the third-person narration in slightly more standard French, but still making extensive use of local words. It's intelligible with some lateral thinking, particularly if you've read Rabelais, but it's a bit of a shock at first. It took me a while to work out that Acadians use "je" for the first person plural pronoun as well as for the singular, for instance. And the dialect is clearly a large part of the book's character and one of the reasons for its obvious classic status in Canada. Quite a tour-de-force, anyway! ( )

Quite a romp, while at the same time, a poignant story of Grand Return. After 15 years in exile in Georgia, the widow Pélagie-la-Charrette leads a group of Acadians, French-speaking inhabitants of the Canadian Maritime Provinces who were deported from their homes in 1755 by the British during the Grand Derangement and scattered throughout the eastern and southern American colonies, on a 10-year journey northward to regain their homeland. She starts out with her four children, the lame and wooden-legged herbalist/ midwife Célina and the almost centenarian Bélonie (affectionately nicknamed "le radoteux" meaning "driveling fool") the people's oral historian and fabulist. Soon, the group is joined by other exiles encountered along the way, such as an orphaned and semi-wild girl called Catoune, and whole families, like the Bourgeois with their mysterious "treasure chest" that they will not part with under any circumstances and the Basque Bastaraches with their violin. Along the way, the pilgrims encounter the quasi-mythical schooner la Grande Goule and its almost as mythical captain Beausoleil. He could be the perfect partner for Pélagie, but first, she must see her people reinstalled in Acadia. One adventure or adversity follows another, too numerous to remember, much less account for here. In brief, for 10 years it's a race between Pélagie's cart of life and return and Bélonie's (always looking behind him)cart of death. Life wins some rounds. Death wins others. Or, one could say, both always win. This novel, although quite different in its intent, reminds me of Diderot's Jacques le fataliste et son maitre, another favorite read. Pélagie's digressions are not so much conversations, like those of Jacques, as they are events. That said, there are frequent pauses for storytelling, both by old Bélonie and, during interludes, by descendents of "la charrette," such as Pélagie-la-Gribouille. gathered around a hearth in 1880, a century later. (Maillet's retelling of the story in 1979 after another century has passed is only one in a long line of telling and retelling.) For a non-native French-Canadian reader like myself, the novel's language is quite a challenge. Much of the dialog is written in phonetic Acadian patois, which means that many words can't be found in a typical French-English dictionary. Nevertheless, surprisingly, one gets the gist, perhaps losing some precision of meaning while imbibing the "color" of the language. ( )

The infamous deportation of the Acadians in 1755 might have been the end of a people. Dispossessed and dispersed to lands far away, to Louisiana, the Carolinas, islands of the Caribbean, and further afield, the Acadians might have disappeared altogether. But something held them together and at least part of that something must have been the tales of their forebears passed down from one generation to the next round the hearth. After fifteen years of exile, Pélagie, known as Pélagie-of-the-cart, decides that enough is enough. She will make her way back across what was to become America and up its eastern seaboard, back to Acadie. But her solid cart and six strong oxen would not make the journey alone. Gathering as many as would join her and collecting further Acadian refugees along the way, Pélagie sets out a journey that would take almost ten years. Through hardship and joy, birth and death, and adventures by the score, Pélagie keeps her spirit and the spirit of a emerging ‘people’ alive. Their shared stories and language hold them together as nothing else could. So it is fitting that this tale is told with all the joie de vivre that is evident in someone as iconic as Pélagie.

Antonine Maillet’s award-winning tale is as fresh and immediate as any that might be told to those gathered at the hearth. Your eyes will widen in amazement and trepidation at what might come next, even as Maillet allays all anxiety about the ultimate outcome through a narrative framing that sets the tale in the mouths of the descendants of those who made the journey. And virtually everyone is here, at least through name association. There are the Cormiers, the LeBlancs, the Landrys and Poiriers and more. And also, naturally, the Maillets. High adventure, of a sort, ensues. And almost always it is the women who drive events, whether it is Pélagie who leads them onward, or club-footed Célina who cures them of their ills and midwifes the next generation into being, or the wild orphan Catoune who inspires the devotion of more than one suitor.

Maillet has created a delightful tale of devotion and courage, and plenty of good humour, out of what was a shameful episode in history. Well worth reading even in this English translation. Recommended. ( )

bought and read this because i loved the show i saw at the NAC. didn't like the book that well. i kept falling asleep. i did shed a tear at pelagie's death. the characters were better individualized in the show. it was hard to keep them separate as i slept. i wanted to like the book. ( )

Pélagie la Charette won its author the Prix Goncour in 1979. It was the first time this prestigious literary prize was awarded for french language work produced outside France. The author, Antonine Maillet, an Acadian and a literature professor believed that for a culture to survive, it needed myth and its own language among other things. Pélagie la Charette is her rendition of a true eighteenth century Acadian story, in mythical proportion, the story of a lone woman, Pélagie la Charette (Pélagie of the Cart, literally) who single-handedly brings her people home, across a continent, pulling with her a cart filled with the treasures of her people. The historical event that her story is based on is that of the Acadian Deportation of 1755. Acadians were the first French settlers in Canada who came under siege when Canada fell definitively to the English through the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713.

As well as creating a story of epic proportions, Maillet also makes a point of recovering ancient french words and expressions falling into disuse today. It is a voyage of discovery to experience this book in its original language for that reason. However, the book is available in English translation.