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Copyright © 2001, Watertown
Daily Times
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18TH-CENTURY RIPPLE EFFECT BOOK HIGHLIGHTS STRUGGLES DURING FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR ON ST. LAWRENCEBy John Golden The French and Indian War on the St. Lawrence River, with its sweeping, complex drama and multicultural cast of characters, would seem to be a rich source of material for a writer of historical fiction. Yet it has been largely neglected by authors. Peter Owens, an Oneida County native and third-generation St. Lawrence islander, has mined that fascinating historical era in his first novel, "Rips" (AmErica House; 306 pages; $19.95 paperback). A 55- year-old writer and professor from Marstons Mills on Cape Cod,, Mass., Mr. Owens has made the mighty river and the brutal vagaries of that 18th-century war on the northern frontier the twin inspiration for his book. "Rips" takes its title from the treacherous currents that can turn the St. Lawrence into a swift, cold killer. With the river and sudden turns of war sweeping along its compelling and culturally diverse characters, the adventure story is a ripping good yarn set against the authentic backdrop of regional history. To its suspenseful mix of captures and escapes, deaths and torture and perilous journeys, the author adds episodes of frank sexual liaisons and cross-cultural romance on the frontier. In that passionate wilderness, even a zealous Jesuit missionary might succumb to temptations of the flesh and the promptings of physical love, before being stoned and burned at the stake by his Huron captors.
They are joined on the island by Henri Trouver, a hapless French lieutenant (and future Quebecois leader and wealthy Montreal restaurateur) who deserts military service after Everett rescues him from drowning on the St. Lawrence. When Everett is forcibly pressed into service as a river guide by a French naval crew and taken to Montreal, Henri joins with Lucy Desjardin, a tough-talking, smooth- sailing, sexually liberated frontier woman, to free him from the imprisoning ship. That bold feat sets in motion a series of violent encounters and sudden shifts in fortune in which both male and female characters are taken captive by warring bands of Indians. Mr. Owens said he spent one and half years researching that combative and "culturally formative" period in the region's history and writing the book. "It was a very strange time," he said by phone from his Cape Cod home, describing the findings of his research, "raw and real and active. It was an awful time, really. Things could happen in such serendipitous ways." A bibliography of his sources on the French and Indian War and St. Lawrence River can be found at the novel's Web site, www.powens.com, which the author developed to promote his book. The site also includes text and photos depicting his family's life on the St. Lawrence River since the early 1940s. For his first long work of fiction, Mr. Owens drew heavily upon his own intimate knowledge of life on the St. Lawrence. Mr. Owen's personal memories there go back to "a cold May day" when he was 6 and fell into the shockingly cold river. His grandfather, Harold V. Owens, bought the first of the family's small islands in Quebec waters in 1943. "Rips" has as its central setting the one-acre island on Lake St. Francis, Ile du Cedre, about 50 miles upriver from Montreal, that the author's grandfather bought in the 1950s. Mr. Owens, the third generation of his family to own the island, has spent summers there for nearly 50 years. His camp has no electricity or running water. "The St. Lawrence to me is just a fabulous and incredible resource," Mr Owens said. "The St. Lawrence, although it's been altered, is in many ways like it was a thousand years ago." "As with all the great rivers in the world, it is bigger and more enduring than people, capable at any moment of killing us or beguiling us with its beauty, charm and serendipity," Mr. Owens has written. Its changing aspects and terrible power are vividly described in "Rips," making the river itself a vital and imposing character in the unfolding tale, not unlike Mark Twain's Mississippi River. Like the characters in "Rips," "I've been through that a lot in my life, being frightened by the river - the squalls, the storms," he said. Raised in Prospect, a village north of Utica, Mr. Owens was graduated from Northwood School in Lake Placid and received his bachelor's degree in English from Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn. After a brief attempt at fiction writing, he worked as a journalist and earned master's and doctoral degrees in writing instruction from Harvard University. He currently teaches professional writing at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, where he was named Teacher of the Year in 1993. In 1998, Mr. Owens traveled to England as a visiting professor at Nottingham Trent University. While working with British creative writers, "I was inspired by them really to write fiction again," he said. Living in a foreign country, "You think about home. You develop different perspectives about things." His thoughts turned to the St. Lawrence and the island of his summers. "That sort of imposed itself as a setting for the work," he said. Returning to his river property in Quebec, Mr. Owens began imagining "what the island would be like hundreds of years ago." He began to study the history of the French and Indian War. "I didn't intend it initially to be a historical novel, but it sort of grew into one," he said. Having tapped the region's rich historical lode once, Mr. Owens has set out to do that again as a novelist. He is writing a sequel to "Rips" set amid the War of 1812 and the largely forgotten battles on the St. Lawrence border, he said. "Rips" may be purchased online from Publish America at www.publishamerica.com or from Amazon Books at www.amazon.com. Mr. Owens's novel will be distributed to area bookstores by North Country Books, Utica. Courtesy, Watertown Daily Times |
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Copyright Peter Owens, 2001 Contact: Peter Owens, pvowens@mediaone.net Last revised: 9-1-2001 |