Willa's New World

Rating:
Summary: Adventure: not just for boys anymore...
Review: Barbara Demers wrote a wonderful tale of a young orphan girl being shipped to the New World where she must learn to fend for herself. She finds much more than just a new continent with strange circumstances. As Willa explores her new surroundings, she also finds within herself a world of strength and knowledge to explore. This is an excellent book which contains a very engaging story that appeals to a girl's sense of independence and adventure. Although Willa draws on memories of her brother for strength as she begins her adventures, she eventually finds that strength within herself as she discovers that women are strong, and more importantly, she is strong herself. The brief historical afterword is icing on the cake! I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in historical fiction!

Rating:
Summary: Successfully captures the "feel" of fur trade life
Review: When I heard about this book, I *had* to read it. I'm an amateur historian with a particular interest in the Canadian fur trade, 1774-1821, and there just aren't that many books written for young people that use this for a setting.

Since I'm not a literary critic, I'll confine my comments to the historic accuracy & educational value of this book. I must note, however, that last year it won Alberta's R. Ross Annett Award for Children's Literature. I found numerous historical errors, but only two rose above mere nit-picking.

First, and foremost, there were no white girls or women in the Canadian fur trade until 1806, eleven years after the setting of this book. This isn't really a problem, in my opinion; by making her protagonist an English girl, Demers can have both a female point of view and a completely fresh perspective. It gives her a reason to explain to the reader the many differences between Willa's old life in England and her new one at the HBC fur post. Demers gets extra marks for explaining, in her afterword, that there weren't really any white women in the fur trade at this time. She also clarifies a few other points where she let her fiction depart from fact, but this is the major one.

My other major historical issue with this book is more subtle. Demers' Natives are overly romanticized. Willa's roommate and instant best friend, Amelia, is a Native girl who works at York Factory in order to learn more about Europeans. Amelia's brother is a skilled hunter who seems to be the only Native trading furs at York Factory. Later we discover that Amelia's family has no European trade goods, which left me wondering what, exactly, he received in return for his many excellent furs. (The author makes it clear that it wasn't rum.) Amelia's mother, Moon, is a skilled healer respected by all Natives. And Amelia's father, Bear, is so spiritual that he spends much of his time in holy places, and rarely sees his family. Clearly, Amelia and her family are exceptional, and we never learn much about what life is like for most Natives. We are also told, repeatedly, of how deadly life is at York Factory; we learn of four deaths there--two violent, one accidental, and one natural. All the Native deaths we learn about are due either to natural causes or European diseases, leading the reader to erroneously conclude that, until the Europeans came, life wasn't difficult for Natives.

Demers does some things unusually well. Overall, I was favorably impressed by her portrait of life within the fur trade. She did a good job of showing the hard work done by the clerks, which rarely gets recognition from historians; the labour shortage, which was indeed so severe that I readily believed Willa being employed as an apprentice clerk when it was discovered she could read & write; the way that certain Natives were entrusted with the lives of fur traders on long journeys; the way Natives rescued Europeans who had gotten themselves into difficulty; the fur post's impressive library; and European men's reliance on Native women to supply them with moccasins. (Demers has an ingenious fictional device that builds on this fact).

I would recommend this novel as a way for young people to get a general impression of what life was like for Europeans within the fur trade, but I'd also caution them not to take the details too literally, because of those nit-picky mistakes I mentioned earlier. I understand that Barbara Demers is working on a sequel. I'm looking forward to it. I hope that, in addition to once again seeking input from historians, she will also visit fur trade "living history" sites so that she can learn about making a fire with flint and steel, how muskets work, and clothing in the fur trade era.