Fred Stenson
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Fred Stenson
The Great Karoo begins in 1899, as the British are trying to wrest control of the riches of South Africa from the Boers, the Dutch farmers who claimed the land. Frank Adams, a cowboy from Pincher Creek, joins the Canadian Mounted Rifles, along with other young men from the ranches and towns nearby—a mix of cowboys and mounted policeman, who, for whatever reason, feel a desire to fight for the Empire in this far-off war.
Against a landscape of extremes, Frank forms intense bonds with Ovide Smith, a French cowboy who proves to be a reluctant soldier, and Jefferson Davis, the nephew of a prominent Blood Indian chief, who is determined to prove himself in a “white man’s war.” As the young Canadians engage in battle with an entrenched and wily enemy, they are forced to realize the bounds of their own loyalty and courage, and confront the arrogance and indifference of those who have led them into conflict.
The Great Karoo is a deeply satisfying novel, marked by the complexities of its plot, the subtleties of its relationships, and the scale of its terrain. Exhilarating and gruesome by turns, it explores with passion and insight the lasting warmth of friendship and the legacy of devastation occasioned by war.
Fred Stenson
In 1822, Edward Harriott, a Hudson’s Bay Company clerk on the North Saskatchewan River, began his greatest adventure in the fur trade, an expedition to the Bow and Missouri Rivers in search of new sources of beaver. A young man, he was full of promise and full of love for his Metis cousin Margaret. But something went wrong. The expedition failed and the new fur trade Governor unfairly blamed Harriort. When the Governor took a fancy to Harriott’s Margaret, misfortune deepened into disaster.
Written between the lines of recorded history, The Trade…
