By Paul Carrier
The French and Indian War seems to get short shrift in American historical fiction, which often focuses on the Revolutionary War or the Civil War.
Yet it is every bit as compelling as later conflicts, as James Fenimore Cooper made clear in The Last of the Mohicans. Unfortunately, Cooper’s 19th-century prose is too stilted for many 21st-century readers, so they may fail to see the dramatic potential of a conflict in which England and France struggled for control of a continent during the years preceding the American Revolution.
Harold Coyle’s 1997 novel, Savage Wilderness, is a more contemporary foray into the period, but it is the exception that proves the rule. Just as the French and Indian War is underplayed in the history books, so it gets little notice in the annals of historical fiction.
Shadowbrook demonstrates the storytelling punch of the war, and it does so with an expansive geographic reach. A sweeping tale, it spans several years from the start of the war in 1754 through the fall of Quebec in 1759, and beyond.
At close to 500 pages, Shadowbrook features such a large cast that a list of more than 70 “important characters in the story” runs to a full four pages, not counting what the author describes as “assorted randy barmaids, crafty millers, entrepreneurial widows, drunken tars, layabouts and ne’er-do-wells.”
The spine of the story is the broad outline of the war, including the struggle for control of the Ohio country, the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia, the massacre at Fort William Henry in New York, the capture of the great French fortress of Louisbourg, and the eventual British victory at Quebec.
At the heart of it all is “the Hale Patent” of Shadowbrook, a sprawling estate along the Hudson River. Owned by the Hale clan, coveted by a one-eyed Scot who is in league with the French Catholics of Canada and bordered by Iroquois lands, the estate is consumed by bitter family rivalries and buffeted by the winds of war.
Shadowbrook centers on three characters, each of whom straddles two worlds. Quentin Hale is a white man and an adopted son of the Potawatomi tribe. Cormac Shea is half Irish and half Indian, but his Indian roots hold sway. Nicole Crane, the daughter of an English father and a French mother, has vowed to become a Catholic nun in Quebec.
As that lineup would suggest, the story explores the period from the perspectives of several cultures: the Americans of the British colonies and their slaves, the French of New France, and the Indians who strove to protect a threatened way of life.
In fact, Swerling clearly views the period as reflecting not only a clash of dueling European empires but also a conflict between whites and natives. She focuses much of her attention on tribal beliefs, customs and attitudes, and on the natives’ fear of annihilation or exile.
Shadowbrook is peppered with Indian and French terminology, lending authenticity to its portrayal of the non-English characters who are such key players in the tale. The Mohawk are “Kahniankehaka.” White settlers are sometimes called, by the Indians, “Cmokmanuk,’ a Potawatomi term. The vast territory north and west of Montreal is, as the French named it, the “pays d’en haut.” People of mixed European and Indian ancestry are “métis.”
Swerling’s ambitious and compelling novel breathes life into a time that is long gone but very much an integral part of our history, when America was still British, Canada was a colony of France and the great Indian tribes of the east were powerful allies, or fearsome enemies.
