LitPick Review
West To Grand Portage is historical fiction set in Montreal in the year 1766. Sixteen-year-old Phillippe Chabot lands a job as a voyageur. He and a group of men will be steering canoes from their hometown Montreal across Lake Superior and on to Grand Portage to trade with Native Americans.
As you read, you see through Phillippe’s eyes the life of a first-year voyageur, from the physical strain of his occupation to the dangers, including treacherous rapids and the personal hatred of individual men. You also get a detailed look at Montreal life. Through the perspective of Phillippe’s cousin Jeanne, you see the struggle of the townsfolk and the sense of community as they joined together to put out a fire that sweeps through Montreal.
West to Grand Portage depicts the struggle of life in the strange place of New France with a mixture of joy and extraordinary sorrow.
Opinion:
West To Grand Portage was not the ideal historical novel, in my opinion. The characters were portrayed well, and they were easy to picture and understand. However, the characters seemed to give themselves mental history lessons in their heads, and it wasn’t delivered in an interesting way.
The book gives a satisfactory view of the culture and the lives people lived during the 1700s in Montreal. The storyline was good but did not make history come alive in a way that will help me remember the important events that occurred in Montreal during that time period.
