Anangokaa

Flora awakens to a changed world

On Miramichi Reader''s list of Best Fiction of 2023.

Upper Canada, 1804, on the edge of Chippewa territory. Flora MacCallum wakes from a malarial coma and witnesses the staggering loss her siblings have endured during their first days on the mosquito-infested banks of the Chenail Ecarte. Lured by Lord Selkirk''s promise of fertile grazing land and freedom far from the Highland clearances, Flora''s father staked his life to bring his family across the Atlantic, alongside a motley assortment of Scottish islanders, to settle this deeply forested and foreboding land.

During the settlement''s first bleak North American winter, Flora discovers hope through an unlikely friendship. The eldest son of a Chippewa chief offers Flora the gift of his mother tongue. It is a gift which shifts Flora''s relationship with the land and the truth of her own spirit. As their furtive fellowship attracts attention, conflict arises in Baldoon. And among Flora''s own family.

Set amid the privation of a struggling frontier settlement, the seduction of the natural world, and an intimate Chippewa forest camp, ANANGOKAA is the evocative coming-of-age story of a young woman who must determine what sacrifices she is willing to make for the life she longs to live.

Fiction.