Storm Child

Andrew Dewar was a graduate of the journalism program at Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto, and on the staff of the North York Public Library.

Storm Child is about a girl torn between two cultures. She was born at the Hudson’s Bay Company post Fort Edmonton early in the nineteenth century, of a Scottish father and a Peigan Indian mother. When her father leaves home to return to Scotland, Isobel (her Indian name is Storm Child) finds herself unable to decide which culture to choose. Her mother stays at the fort, and she returns to her grandparents’ tribal home. But her ties are not cut; when the smooth-talking Jamey Jock Bird leads the tribe to American traders, and when she discovers that the father of an adopted Cree boy is at Fort Edmonton, she finds herself drawn back. And her young friend Henry Rowland is there as well, and she can’t quite bear to leave him.

Brenda Bellingham has done a great deal of research for this book, and many of the events described in it really took place. But the fact is that this is a novel of character, and Bellingham can’t bring her people to life enough to make the book a really exciting read. They are predictable and a bit stereotyped, and their speech is telegraphic and awkward. Bellingham finds herself having to explain their meanings every time they speak.

Her Indian culture seems superficial as well, I couldn’t tell what real difference there was between the Peigans and the traders, or even if there was a difference. And since the book hinged on this split, I would say it failed.

Two things especially colour my view of it: it portrays the Indians as either misguided or untrustworthy, and certainly not very self-willed, and it implies that the Americans are automatically enemies to be avoided. On the other hand, Isobel learns a few lessons about friendship and good behaviour along the way, and as long as the reader is thoughtful there shouldn’t be any problem.

It is not a bad book, but neither is it a really good one. It is adequate as a historical novel, if a little flat.