Putlizer Prize Novelist Annie Prouix's BARKSKINS - An Epic Saga that is Devastating & Everlasting

Annie Prouix (b Amer 1935) is one of the finest living novelists.  "The Shipping News" won both the Pulitzer & Nat'l Book Award (1993).   Her short story "Brokeback Mountain" was made into an Acad. Award winning film.  Her brilliant writing style & subject matters vary enormously in her body of work making her creative genius paramount.  However, there is a unifying theme that concerns protection/destruction of the environment and persecuted populations.  "Barkskins" (2018) is an epic novel that spans the globe and generations beginning at the end of the 17th C spanning up to the 19th C.  The cast of characters become so convoluted and churning that it becomes arduous to keep lineage and logistics in line.  The 2 male characters from whom the family tree and future logging legacy in North America stem are 2 Frenchmen who land in French Canada as indentured slaves yet cunningly and relentlessly build their vast fortunes from the land.  They build their empires by razing the trees and decimating the Native Indian population who lived in harmony with their environment before being overrun by entitled, heartless white settlers.  The men who at the forefront of conquering the land and financial rewards are multinational, polyglot individuals.  These men are resourceful but not remorseful.  The history of the shipping trade industry, lumbering industry and financings is fascinating until halfway through this factual & shameful odyssey.  This reader went overboard midway despite knowing not to change horses midstream.  Still, I applaud Prouix's masterful writing and moreover her historical rhetoric that needs retelling.  The destruction of the seemingly plentiful national forests is ruthless and the treatment of the indigenous population, heinous.  The lacking morality & inhumane disregard for the land and its indigenous population bears retelling.  One of the few surviving Mi'kmaw Indians (living in Canada) tells his offspring.  "I learned that Indian people must take whatever is useful from the whitemen.  It is just because they have taken everything from us.  Many of our people died with secrets locked in their heads.  Now it is good for us to learn how to read and write so we may know how we make useful things, how our grandfathers lived.  That is why we learn to read-so we can remember."  The 800+ book (which should be purchased via kindle to conserve the use of paper) is monumental in scope and shaming of ruthless justifications that permitted the dehumanizing of races and demolishing of forest lands & natural resources.