The orenda

Boyden, Joseph 1966- (author).

Summary: From the Scotiabank Giller Prize-Winning author of Through Black Spruce comes a literary masterpiece steeped in the natural beauty and blood-soaked brutality of our country's formative years. A visceral portrait of life at a crossroads, The Orenda opens with a brutal massacre and the kidnapping of the young Iroquois Snow Falls, a spirited girl with a special gift. Her captor, Bird, is an elder and one of the Huron Nation's great warriors and statesmen. It has been years since the murder of his family and yet they are never far from his mind. In Snow Falls, Bird recognizes the ghost of his lost daughter and sees the girl possesses powerful magic that will be useful to him on the troubled road ahead. Bird's people have battled the Iroquois for as long as he can remember, but both tribes now face a new, more dangerous threat from afar. Christophe, a charismatic Jesuit missionary, has found his calling amongst the Huron and devotes himself to learning and understanding their customs and language in order to lead them to Christ. An emissary from distant lands, he brings much more than his faith to the new world. As these three souls dance each other through intricately woven acts of duplicity, small battles erupt into bigger wars and a nation emerges from worlds in flux.

Record details

ISBN: 9780143174165
Physical Description: 490 pages : color, map ; 23 cm.
print
Publisher: Toronto : Penguin Canada Books Inc, c2014

Content descriptions

General Note:

First published in Hamish Hamilton Hardcover by Penguin Canada Books Inc., 2013

Biographical or Historical Data:

Joseph Boyden is a novelist and short story writer. His first novel, Three Day Road won the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. His second novel, Through Black Spruce, won the 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Of Irish, Scottish and Anishinaabe heritage, Boyden writes about First Nations heritage and culture. He studied creative writing at York University and the University of New Orleans, and taught in the Aboriginal Student Program at Northern College. He is currently a Lecturer with the UBC Creative Writing Program. (Bowker Author Biography)