Staff Picks

In 1693 two indentured servants arrive in what is now eastern Canada to become woodcutters—barkskins. Rene Sel stays there and is forced to marry a native woman while Charles Duque runs away to trade furs and set up a timber business. From these two family lines we experience over 300 years of the North American destruction of its people, culture and land. Folklore had taught us to be afraid of the forest, but this novel shows us that it is the forest that should be afraid of man. Author Annie Proulx runs through her story killing off characters as the forests were run through for timber. She reveals the ruthless nature of how we became the nation we are today and I liked her novel for doing so without any didactic tone.

The title “Here I Am” refers to passages in the Book of Genesis where Abraham is present for his God and his son. This novel unfolds over four weeks in the contemporary life of Jacob, a Jewish husband dealing with his failing marriage, his son, the eldest of three whose conduct at Hebrew school jeopardizes his bar mitzvah, his Holocaust survivor father moving to a Jewish home and his dying dog. These family crises are set against a catastrophic earthquake in Israel which sets the stage for a major Middle East conflict. This is a story about identity, about being the husband for your wife, the father for your son, the son for your father and the citizen for your country while respecting your religious beliefs. Jacob is never searching for his identity in any of his roles, but is ever present in all of them. I liked this novel for its feeling of ritual in the everyday all the while Jacob’s life is tearing apart.

In the late 1850s the whaling industry is dying as the need for the mammal’s oil is giving way to petroleum, but in this story whaling is only a ruse for insurance fraud. The characters and the forces of nature are all too real and grievously violent. There are two central characters aboard the ship: Henry Drax, a psychopath, primal in all his actions, and Patrick Sumner, an ex‑army physician coping with past failure and a broken reputation. When Sumner discovers that Drax is evil, he is compelled to make things right. This story has copious amounts of raw violence and filth so swift and sure that it’s hard to believe that the men have the ability to scheme and calculate. The arctic cold and the dirty, diseased, and smelly conditions aboard the ship make the reader marvel at what the body can endure while pondering how routinely it can fail from acts of bludgeoning and rape. This novel leaves the reader wanting to forget the vivid, graphic actions of Drax’s debauchery, but I will never forget Sumner’s determination to do right.