William Hennessy’s first book is a historical fiction novel set in the early 1800s.
The former Cook County attorney puts the reader smack dab into the era, depicting the tough life, ever-present danger, and adventure around every corner.
The pages follow a young man, Bart Murphree, who escapes from his belligerent stepdad and makes his way from Pennsylvania all of the way to Winnipeg. His stepfather is angry because “Blue Legs,” the last of the Erie tribe, has killed his younger brother, and Bart couldn’t stop him.
Along the way, Bart meets voyageurs and is given a job from the Northwest Company to trade goods for Pemmican from the Southern Cree and Blackfeet. He travels along the river and lake routes to Fort William, making his way to Grand Portage and even Grand Marais, but mostly the setting is in Canada along the voyageur trading and trapping route.
Before Bart gets out of Pennsylvania, he is nearly captured by the local sheriff. Bart escapes the sheriff, a friend of his stepfathers, and steals his horse. His stepdad finds him living with a family many miles from home and tries to force him to come back with him. Stepdad needs someone to do the chores and run his illegal whiskey-making still. Bart gets away after a fight with his stepdad and moves on, further and further away from his boyhood home. Along the way: he makes friends with Peter and Karl, is nearly killed by an evil voyageur, and learns the fur traders’ ways.
Out of all the riches a voyageur could possess, one necessary thing was having enough Pemmican to eat so he could make the long trek between trading posts.
Pemmican is made from dried buffalo meat mixed with bison fat and mashed together and dried with wild berries. Fur traders used it on their long voyages, and the Metis traded it to the Northwest Company’s voyageurs. Bart is put in charge of trading for Pemmican, living and traveling with the Cree, where he became known as the Pemmican man. Hennessy describes the nitty-gritty of everyday life. He shows how healthy, creative, and innovative people had to be to stay alive.
As Bart makes his way from home and before he begins his real adventure, he meets Mary when he stays with her family for a time; they fall in love. During his time in the wilderness he saves his best friend Peter’s life, and he is nearly killed by the man who shot and tried to end Peter’s life.
Gone from home just a little more than a year, Bart carries a dream with him. One day he hopes to return to his house and free his mother from his abusive stepfather. But first, Bart has many miles on horseback to ride and many miles to paddle before he can go home. Will Bart make it home and free his mother? Or will he be captured by Blue Legs and suffer the same fate his stepbrother faced? You will have to read to the end of the book to find out. You won’t be sorry you did.
Backdrop
It’s 1815, and Thomas Douglas, the 5th Earl of Selkirk, has been resettling poor Scottish farmers along the Red River in a 116,000 square mile area that stretched from North Dakota to Manitoba and Minnesota. This large expanse of the property was called the Selkirk Colony. The land had been acquired from the Hudson Bay Company, but Thomas promised Hudson Bay Company 200 men each year when the company needed workers. He also agreed that the settlers would not engage in the fur trade.
Selkirk, now a Hudson Bay Company partner, wanted to stop the Northwest Company from crossing his land. This would have cut the Company out of much of the fur trade. However, the Metis had long traded with the Northwest Company and refused to honor Thomas’s request.
Things came to a head when Miles MacDonell, a governor appointed by Selkirk, issued a proclamation that prohibited the export of food from the area, including Pemmican. This didn’t sit right with the Metis, who made a living selling pemmican to the Northwest Company fur traders, and in 1816, a fight erupted that left 21 of Lord Selkirk’s men dead and one Metis killed. The conflict was called the Battle of Seven Oaks. Selkirk and his men responded by taking Fort William because it belonged to the Northwest Company. This resulted in a long, expensive court battle for Lord Selkirk, who ended up broke at the end of his life. As for the real-life settlers who lived in Selkirk Colony, many moved to southern Canada, which was easier to farm. Today the site of the Seven Oaks battle is a park in Winnipeg.
Hennessey has used these authentic events and territory as a backdrop for his story, weaving them into the book’s details.
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