Oneworld Readers' Guide

Oneworld Readers’ Guide

1640s, The New World

In the remote winter landscape a brutal massacre and the kidnapping of a young Iroquois girl violently re-ignites a deep rift between two tribes. The girl’s captor, Bird, is one of the Huron Nation’s great warriors and statesmen. Years have passed since the murder of his family, and yet they are never far from his mind. In the girl, Snow Falls, he recognizes the ghost of his lost daughter, but as he fights for her heart and allegiance, small battles erupt into bigger wars as both tribes face a new, more dangerous threat from afar.

Travelling with the Huron is Christophe, a charismatic missionary who has found his calling among the tribe and devotes himself to learning and understanding their customs and language. An emissary from distant lands, he brings much more than his faith to this new world, with its natural beauty and riches. As these three souls dance with each other through intricately woven acts of duplicity, their social, political and spiritual worlds collide - and a new nation rises from a world in flux.

About the Author

Joseph Boyden’s first novel, Three Day Road, was selected for the Today Show Book Club, and it won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award, as well as numerous others. His second novel, Through Black Spruce, was awarded the Scotiabank Giller Prize and named the Canadian Booksellers Association Book of the Year; it also earned him the CBA’s Author of the Year Award. Boyden, of Ojibwe, Irish, and Scottish roots, is a member of the Creative Writing faculty at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He divides his time between Northern Ontario and Louisiana.

Discussion Points

1. Consider the significance of the title. What is the Orenda?

2. Did you feel one of the three characters to be more trustworthy and/or convincing than the others? Would the story have the same emotional impact if it were told from a single perspective?

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3. Many of the indigenous characters frequently talk about their dreams. What relevance do these dreams have within the story? Do any dreams have a direct impact on the characters’ actions?

4. The three protagonists are called Bird, Snow Falls and Christophe – though Christophe is also referred to as the Crow. Bird’s Hurons have names such as Fox, He Finds Village and Hot Cinder, but those who convert to Christianity take new names, such as Aaron and Joseph. Discuss the importance of names in the novel. What do they tell you about the two cultures?

5. What role does Christianity play in the novel and how are missionaries portrayed?

6. Christophe’s mother tongue is French, whereas Bird and Snow Falls speak indigenous languages. Can you think of any misunderstandings that shape the characters’ actions? Christophe gradually learns to speak Huron – what impact does this have?

7. What do you make of Gosling and her magic?

8. All three protagonists are constantly addressing someone. Who might the addressees be?

9. Snow Falls and Hot Cinder are “adopted” by the Huron clan. How is adoption portrayed in the novel?

10. At the beginning of the novel both Bird and Christophe comment upon Snow Falls’ appearance: “Despite the pock scars from an old sickness, she’s beautiful, and will only become more so in the next few years” (Bird); “She’s not very beautiful, at least in comparison to the other children around her. She’d be better looking if not for the scars of some childhood disease that ravaged her face” (Christophe). Why do you think Boyden chose to make them view her so differently? What does it tell you about the two male protagonists?

11. Bird and Christophe both fight for Snow Falls’ attention and loyalty. What are their motives? What do they see in her and how do their relationships change over the course of the story?

12. “What you plan to do is simple and utter brutality […]. And yes, my people practice their own form of it too, but that makes none of it right.” There are some very violent scenes in the novel. How do you feel about the violence?

13. “While I have in no way fulfilled what I had once as a young man hoped to fulfil in this wilderness, I can’t imagine an earthly paradise grander than this one. Despite the darkness that constantly threatens this place in which I find myself, I have had the immense privilege of living amongst a people at once craven and prone to the barest of appetites, and more generous and even gentle than any I’ve ever had the pleasure to know.” This is one of the final statements made by Christophe. How does Christophe’s view of the Huran and Wendat change throughout the novel?