Gérard Bouchard

Although my review is in English, I read the book in French.

This is the story of a young man, Florent, with little experience of life who takes a six-month assignment on an Indian Reserve (Uashat) in Quebec. His job is to map the family trees of the residents. He suffers from asthma; he is delicate in both health and emotions. And he is profoundly affected by what he sees at Uashat.

The novel is in the form of Florent's journal that he faithfully kept throught his time on the Reserve. From his writings, we learn about life on the Reserve, the important role religion plays, and of the modern-day tension between development and traditional lifestyle.

Florent falls in love with an Indian woman, Sara. Through their relationship, we see the real differences in culture between the French Canadians and Aboriginals. The author has done a particularly good job with this plot line. There is nothing stereotypical; nor do we have "star-crossed lovers". The author lets the facts speak for themselves and the realizations devleop in the reader.

No spoilers here, but the ending is very strong and hit me with a deeper understanding of what Florent experienced. The ending is what boosted this to four stars for me.

Note to those for whom French is a second language: the style of writing (i.e. journal entries) makes this easy to read from a grammatical structure point of view. Not a lot of passe sample or complex illusions to trip you up. I found that most of the words I didn't know were nouns -- easy to guess within the context or to look up. So, go for it!… (mere)