Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war.

In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II. What might have been a punchy novella, linking the Cree windigo killer phenomenon to the killing fields of Europe, has been inflated to a size that obscures what might have been its uniqueness. As for the wrong-headedness, it lies in Boyden’s lack of awareness that his oft-told tale leans now toward the numbing rather than the revelatory. They’re superb marksmen, and, as a sniper, Elijah racks up an astonishing 356 kills as he becomes a morphine addict and walks a fine line between heroism and homicide (a standard-case history). The quiet Xavier and the flamboyant, garrulous Elijah are just two more privates sucked into this hellhole. There is discomfort (lice, trench foot), there is horror, and there is morphine. There are endless trench raids as snipers fire from nests and big guns roar. As to its faithfulness, it doesn’t deviate from the standard accounts of trench warfare, so that here are the Canadian lines, while a few yards away is Fritz (aka the Hun, the Bosch). What prompted the Crees to enlist is unclear (a curious omission), but Niska blessed them with the wisdom of the ages: “You must do what you must do.” Boyden’s rendering of the war is both faithful and wrong-headed. It then alternates between Xavier’s last days, his and Niska’s recollections of the past (Niska is a diviner and windigo, or cannibal, killer), and scenes of the European battlefield, which get pride of place. The war is over when the story opens and a fever-stricken Xavier, sustained only by morphine, is coming home to Niska. Xavier learned his hunting skills from his auntie, Niska, and he in turn taught Elijah, who was schooled by nuns and speaks far better English than Xavier.

Xavier Bird and Elijah Whiskeyjack, so-called bush Indians who live in the woods, have been friends since childhood. Two Cree Indians from eastern Canada experience WWI trench warfare in Canadian Boyden’s first novel (following his story collection, Born with a Tooth, 2001).

Three day road novel