Refuge in l'Acadie

1694 Port Royal. Ordinary life is disrupted when a beautiful dark-skinned stranger floats in from the Big Bay in a dug-out. She is followed by three self-called slave hunters from Acadia's enemy, New England. The village drunk knows one of these "slave hunters" all too well: the man kidnapped his little sister years earlier, abandoning her at the docks of Boston Harbor. Keskoua, her love-smitten brother, the mysterious stranger, a friend with suspicious motives, and the drunk band together to plan a sea voyage on a cursed ship to find the drunk's sister and rescue the stranger's daughter from slavery."I enjoyed every single page."-Phyllis Bohonis, author of The WildernessI didn't ask it but she answered my question anyway: "These scars on the outside of me are not from being a slave. They are from being thought beautiful and living beside a jealous neighbor. The scars on the inside of me are from slavery. No one can see those.""I saw them," I told her. "I saw them when you were sitting there on the log with H l ne's shawl over your shoulders when you first got here. When Monsieur St-Amand was trying to look into your ears and your eyes with his glass instrument. The fear and anger became even stronger in you. It came out like a storm cloud."