Published by Scribner on June 14, 2016
Barkskins is a generational saga that covers ground from 1693 to the present. The key characters are descended from René Sel or Charles Duquet. The story focuses on a family lumber business that begins with woodcutters and grows into a multifaceted corporation. The novel is as big and sprawling as the “new world” history that inspires it. Like a settlement, it begins with a few people and slowly expands as new generations claim new territory.
René Sel is a French settler indentured to M. Trépagny. Sel’s job is to help the unlikable Trépagny clear land near Kébec in New France. Sel is eventually given a Native wife he did not choose and the chance to work land of his own.
The focus then shifts to Charles Duquet, another Frenchman indentured to Trépagny. Duquet has fled his servitude and intends to find his own path to success. He does so by pursuing a trade empire involving lumber and fur. The greatest profit lies in trade with China, a country Annie Proulx depicts as vividly as she does the new worlds that have been colonized by England and France.
The story follows descendants of Sel and Duquet through the centuries. Much of his story concerns the politics of timber as rough entrepreneurs eventually give way to more sophisticated businessmen -- and, late in the story, businesswomen. The Duquet name is eventually “Americanized” to Duke when family members begin Duke & Sons, a lumber business that family members in later generations struggle to control.
The novel draws a clear picture of the evolving logging and timber business. Lumber barons shared the opinion that it was their destiny to chop down every tree in sight, as if the forests were “infinite and permanent.” The Duke family sneers at early notions of forest management. Arguments in favor of reforestation are rebuffed with the company’s forest management policy: find virgin forests and “cut ‘em down.”
One of the story’s most interesting aspects is its illustration of the problems encountered by people who live in two racial worlds. Intermarriage between Natives and Europeans produces children who feel like outsiders, belonging neither to the Native people or to the white settlers. Sel’s children, for example, are half-French and half-Native. His Canadian grandchildren encounter the worst of both worlds as they face the English, who are killing Natives and overwhelming French settlers.
The novel’s strongest theme is the loss of identity that the Native people experience when they are uprooted by white settlers, or when the forests and animals that they depend upon disappear, usurped by European colonists. With the displacement of Native peoples comes a slow death of traditions that parallels the destruction of the wilderness.
Characters are varied in their personalities. Some are gentle and others violent, some are lustful and others chaste, some are vulgar and others refined. As do real people, they often behave in surprising ways. Proulx follows each long enough to give the reader a sense of who they are, but with so many characters coming and going, it is difficult to form an attachment to any of them.
Male characters dominate early in the novel, although a few strong women play key roles in family life. There is also a hint of early feminism as a young woman insists on joining the family business rather than attending finishing school and selecting a proper upper-class husband. Reflecting history, women play a greater role in the economic world in later years.
My only serious complaint about Barkskins is that it is longer than it needs to be. Some of the scenes of hunting and logging and sea travel seem repetitive. The high quality of Proulx’s prose and her detailed descriptions makes the reading consistently pleasant, but the atmosphere, having been well established, doesn’t need all of the embellishments that Proulx gives it. The novel is never dull, but some chapters are more interesting than others.
The story is told in manageable episodes, although it’s all a bit of a whirlwind toward the end. The ending gives the book a nice balance, however, adding an academic understanding to issues that are important to the story, including population growth and deforestation. I’m not a big fan of generational sagas, but Barkskins is a book I enjoyed.
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