The Seventh Portage

About this book

Winter, 1763. The Treaty of Paris has handed New France to the British, and along the Rivière-des-Prairies below Montreal the voyageur families wait to learn what their promises are still worth. Cécile Trouvé is twenty-three, born with a withered left arm, kept home to mend nets while her six brothers paddled west. Now her father is dying, and out of the seven of them he calls for her. In his room is a birchbark case: a wampum belt, a ledger of names and debts, a knotted cord of carrying places, and an obligation four generations old. Somewhere past Lake Superior there is a portage that appears on no chart, where the record must be spoken aloud before the ice returns. A Glasgow trader already knows the case exists. So does her eldest brother. Cécile has one season to reach a place nobody will name.