River Thieves

Michael Crummey has long been one of my favourite Canadian authors, and his book Sweetland was the first novel of his that I read. This book is his first novel, and I am ashamed of myself for taking so long to read it. Crummey writes about the history of his province, Newfoundland. Michael Crummey was a poet before he became a novelist, and his a marvellous skill with words and the English language comes out in his books. This book is beautifully written, and very descriptive with an engaging cast of characters. It is set during the time when the European settlers had arrived and were settling in Newfoundland. As near as I can tell it is around the early 19th Century, The Governor of Newfoundland during the timeframe of this book was show more Sir Charles Hamilton, and he was in office from 1818-1823. The book illustrates the uncertainties of the relationship between Beothuk natives and the European settlers. Many things happened in the Newfoundland wilderness during this time, as these two nations each try to take over the country, but a lot of the more unsettling things that occurred in the territory were buried for years. Some we may never know. These buried and unburied secrets add a sense of urgency and suspense to the story. Crummey has captured the historical significance of the antagonism generated over the land dispute. and, as well, the living conditions during this unsettling time, and always foremost is the beauty and the unrelenting hardships of of this land. This is an enthralling story of the early beginnings of Canada's newest province, long before John A. MacDonald and the war of 1812. Newfoundland's history is rich and complex and the book makes for fascinating reading. show less

Set in Newfoundland, 1811-1820, this book is a fictionalized version of real events. John Peyton, Sr., John Peyton, Jr., and tutor Cassie Jure live together near the north shore where they make a living by fishing and trapping. Captain David Buchan is a British naval officer who attempts to encourage trade and end hostilities between the settlers and the Beothuk. The book features two expeditions to the Beothuk, each of which ends in violence. The Peytons bring back a Beothuk woman, whom they call Mary. Buchan investigates the second expedition to determine if a crime was committed. Cassie teaches Mary rudimentary English. Mary provides information to Buchan about the violence that preceded her abduction.

Crummey has a knack for vividly show more 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. show less

Set in Newfoundland, 1811-1820, this book is a fictionalized version of real events. John Peyton, Sr., John Peyton, Jr., and tutor Cassie Jure live together near the north shore where they make a living by fishing and trapping. Captain David Buchan is a British naval officer who attempts to encourage trade and end hostilities between the settlers and the Beothuk. The book features two expeditions to the Beothuk, each of which ends in violence. The Peytons bring back a Beothuk woman, whom they call Mary. Buchan investigates the second expedition to determine if a crime was committed. Cassie teaches Mary rudimentary English. Mary provides information to Buchan about the violence that preceded her abduction.

Crummey has a knack for vividly show more 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. show less

It is astonishing River Thieves was Michael Crummey's debut novel. Right from the outset he demonstrates his facility as a storyteller and a master of writing.

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 show more 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. show less

Covering approximately ten years at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century this looks at life in Newfoundland - the trappers, fishermen, government officials and their contacts with the native Beothuk. The Beothuk have been driven from their homelands and away from the coastal regions. Meetings are often violent and the British government have decided to try to establish friendly relations, but is it too late?

It is a story I know nothing about and Crummey has managed to create an evocative and informative look at the times and conditions in Newfoundland. The back stories of the settlers gives a picture of those different times and their motives for being in Newfoundland. For me the narrative occasionally jumped making me double check show more whether I had accidentally turned two pages but the layers of the story do build up. Also some sections read like a traveller's journal - x miles up the river and what the terrain was like. But, as a whole, this is a sometimes bleak (misunderstandings and conflict do not make for a happy read) and very vivid, strong piece of historical fiction. show less

This is Mr. Crummey’s first novel and it’s not as well told as his later ones. This one was a bit slow to get going, but it really got better as it went along. And the story eventually drew me in. A British naval officer is tasked with establishing contact with the Beothuk people. In doing so, he meets settlers who have a deep hatred for the Indians, as well as those who are more sympathetic. He enters a world of frontier justice with complex links and alliances among the settlers; a world of strong allegiances and deep grudges.

John Senior was a complex character. For so long, he seemed like a bad guy...then maybe not so much (hiring Cassie; in comparison to Miller; defense of Reilly, etc.); then back to a bad guy in his reactions show more to the Indians...except he seemed to care about Mary. Buchan even said “you sound as if you care” more than once. There were many nuances in him.

And Buchan was similarly well presented. He must have had a hard time falsifying the results of his investigation being such a fierce supporter of the King, and committed to the law. But, when push came to shove, he saved his reputation and his marriage.

For me, one of the most poignant parts of the book come near the end where John Peyton realizes about Cassie that: "She was never his father’s lover, though she let him think she was. All those years, it was her who held him away."

So, not my favourite by Michael Crummey but still features strong writing and complex storylines deftly handled. show less

British naval officer David Buchan arrives on the Bay of Exploits in 1810 with orders to establish friendly contact with the elusive Beothuk, the aboriginal inhabitants known as “Red Indians” who have been driven almost to extinction. Aware that the success of his mission rests on the support of local white settlers, Buchan approaches the most influential among them, the Peytons, for assistance, and enters a shadowy world of allegiances and deep grudges. His closest ally, the young John Peyton Jr., maintains an uneasy balance between duty to his father — a powerful landowner with a reputation as a ruthless persecutor of the Beothuk - and his troubled conscience. Cassie Jure, the self-reliant, educated and secretive woman who keeps show more 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 determination to maintain her independence. When Buchan's peace expedition goes horribly awry, the rift between father and son deepens.

With a poetic eye and a gift for storytelling, Crummey vividly depicts the stark Newfoundland backcountry. He shows the agonies of the men toiling towards the caribou slaughtering yards of the Beothuk; of coming upon the terrible beauty of Red Indian Lake, its frozen valley lit up by the sunset like “a cathedral lit with candles”; then retreating through rotten ice that slices at clothing and skin as they flee the disaster. He breathes life into the rich vernacular of the time and place, and with colourful detail brings us intimately into a world of haying and spruce beer, of seal meat and beaver pelts: a world where the first governor of Newfoundland to die in office is sent back to England preserved in “a large puncheon of rum”.

Years later, when the Peytons’ second expedition to the Beothuks' winter camp leads to the kidnapping of an Indian woman and a murder, Buchan returns to investigate. As the officer attempts to uncover what really happened on Red Indian Lake, the delicate web of allegiance, obligation and debt that holds together the Peyton household and the community of settlers on the northeast shore slowly unravels. The interwoven histories of English and French, Mi’kmaq and Beothuk, are slowly unearthed, as the story culminates with a growing sense of loss — the characters’ private regrets echoed in the tragic loss of an entire people. An enthralling story of passion and suspense, River Thieves captures both the vast sweep of history and the intimate lives of a deeply emotional and complex cast of characters caught in its wake.

Many historical events, which provided inspiration for the novel, took place around where Crummey grew up. There was a family of Peytons in the Bay of Exploits who were intimately involved in the fate of the Beothuk, John the Elder known as a ‘great Indian killer’ and his son, John the Younger, attempting to establish friendly contact. “What set of circumstances would account for this difference?” asked Crummey. “How would the two men relate to one another? What would the motivations be for their particular actions? As soon as a writer begins answering these sorts of questions in any definitive way, the writing becomes fiction.” Though faithful to historical record in many details, he imagined ways in which the characters might participate more fully in each other’s story. “Of course a different writer, or even myself at a different time in my life, would have imagined a different world of characters and events, a radically different picture.” show less