by Dahl Botterill
History and monsters share the opening prologue of Cherie Dimaline's novel Empire of Wild. The history is one of displacement and community, while the monsters are both fantastic and all too real.
Arcand is a small community made up of Métis families. Their ancestors were forcibly moved from Drummond Island to Georgian Bay in the early 1800s, only to be displaced again when their shorelines drew the eyes of developers. Cottages and vacation homes eventually pushed most of the Métis from the water up a dirt road into what would become Arcand. The roads and land thereabouts are home not only to the Metis and the local wildlife but also to the Rogarou, the werewolf and warning that remains long after so much else had been taken, hunting those that would betray or steal or hurt.
After this brief lesson, the book introduces Joan Beausoliel. Joan is grief-stricken and desperate in her eleventh month of searching for her missing husband. Victor was the love of her life, the person who fit her like nobody else could, but he disappeared after a disagreement over selling her family land to a developer. When no sign of him was found, the town and community gave up on looking for him, but Joan hasn't. Her life has become consumed by her search for Victor and by her attempts to fill the very empty space when she isn't searching. Joan is a mess when she stumbles into a revival tent in the local Walmart parking lot and finds herself face to face with a barely recognizable Victor that doesn't know her at all.
So begins the story of Joan's desperate efforts to save a man that doesn't know her from a threat that nobody can see, and it grows into a more interesting tale than I expected at first glance. I picked up Empire of Wild because I enjoyed The Marrow Thieves, but the brief synopsis left me expecting something a little more pedestrian, something that played it a little safer. I was very pleasantly surprised to discover otherwise.
Cherie Dimaline weaves history, culture, and werewolves into a thrilling novel of love, loss, and neocolonialism. The past and present are bound together by both the family members surrounding Joan and the dangers surrounding Arcand. All these interrelationships are described using words and sentences appropriate to the story. The writing sometimes flows extensively; other times, it's sparse, but it always fits the tale being told. Dimaline doesn't waste space with the unnecessary, and Empire of Wild is all the more beautiful a book for her discernment.