Racing Tides

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

Sodric du Gaelle is an odd — very odd — young man, who is either the illegitimate son of a French nobleman or the offspring of two spies involved in the tangled and tragic affairs of Mary Stuart. He is a debt-ridden gambler, with many fleshly weaknesses including an awkward fondness for self-flagellation, and with absolutely no claim to piety. But he pretends to be a candidate for the priesthood in order to escape from his more pressing creditors aboard The Espénance, bound for the French colonies in the New World.

Since the year is 1604, it is a very New World indeed in which the muddled young man eventually finds himself. He must deal with his own all too numerous confusions, the rigours of a harsh and dangerous new land, and the completely baffling inhabitants of that land; and all this interwoven with bouts of storytelling, hunting, and theological speculation.... It certainly isn’t easy reading, nor easily understood once read: a rich potpourri of fantasy, history, and tall tale likely to be caviar to the general.