Week 1 - Riches

Lisette Will Annie Suzanne Eva Xavier Marius Gregor. The characters or the astonishing and integral images from nature. The humor, the humanity, the beauty. I do not know which I will end up writing the most about while reading this fantastic book. And in a way it is already impossible to separate them. Literally. We have Will being born again through black spruce as he somehow manages to land his bush plane on a creek, and he also turns to the cold brown water of the Moose River, ingesting it along with his whiskey. We have Annie, supremely competent in her environment of the north – even if she herself has doubts. As a transplanted Northerner I liked seeing that setting represented so accurately, the extreme cold and the annual assault by bugs as a spring rite. I have also visited Moosonee and Moose Factory twice. Some of what is in the book is part of what a tourist would experience and remember, and the rest has to come from first hand experience of those living in a small isolated community. The unique characters are both heart-breaking and funny. For example in discussing Will’s morning-after jogging, Joe declines to participate due to the fact that his truck is running fine and he doesn't see the need. The book certainly set us up by posing far too many essential questions to even mention. Needless to say I just want to know more and more about their stories whether it's Eva, the missing Gus who seems to have unwittingly precipitated so much violence, the two nieces, or Will himself. I'm already picking the book up to read the next page.