In the dark and spiritual world that existed in the territory that would become Ontario, Joseph Boyden uses his third novel, The Orenda, to guide the reader on a rich journey of love, sacrifice, retaliation, and understanding between two worlds that are forced together by the unrelenting tides of change. Set in the New World (1640s), the novel intricately knits together the souls of three characters who must shed their pride and animosity as a series of significant events in Canadian and Aboriginal history bring their very different lives together. The Orenda, the third installment of a trilogy including Three Day Road, and Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Through Black Spruce, is historically authentic, yet lyrical and intimate. At times harrowing and at others lighthearted, Boyden, himself from Aboriginal ancestry, has created a flawless novel that is unparalleled in any other work of Aboriginal fiction, even his own.
In the remote and fearsome Canadian winter landscape, the story begins with the massacre of an Iroquois family of the Haudenosaunee nation, the daughter of which, young Snow Falls, is captured by their murderer, “Warrior Bird, a Wendat Huron native.” Recognizing within the girl a likeness to his own lost daughter, and seeking to avenge the murder of his kin at the hands of the Iroquois, Bird makes the decision to adopt her as his own. This, along with his reluctant mission to bring Francophone Jesuit priest Christophe to the Wendat village sets in motion irreversible events that threaten not only relations between two nations but also their very existence as a people.
As father and adoptive daughter both struggle to come to terms with their circumstances within the wooden ramparts of the village, a larger and more dangerous threat looms from afar. This threat is personified in Christophe, who, despite great and intensifying hostility with the villagers, silently studies and attempts to understand the Wendat people and their weaknesses so that he may undertake his given task of converting and ‘saving’ their souls. Unknown to him, the seemingly simple and savage Wendat have magic undiscovered by those who wish to see them converted and tamed. The orenda, the life force said by the Huron to be shared amongst all people and the natural world, will prove to be the unifying strength that links each to the next in a ferocious time of violence and war.
The consistently poetic and serenely narrated novel traverses through events of extreme and unimaginable violence to depictions of desire, friendship, and occurrences of everyday life that reflect those of the modern person. In this way, the author connects the daily lives of the Huron to those of his characters in Three Day Road and Through Black Spruce, allowing the trilogy to develop full circle.
Boyden’s use of three narrative perspectives is a brilliant means of enabling even the most biased and critical reader to find a sense of affinity with the characters and their determinations. His expressive and eloquent writing style vividly illustrates a physical and emotional landscape that allows the reader to follow along in a chronicle of the spiritual, emotional, and political growth of those bound by conflict and their shared humanity. The Orenda is the perfect conclusion to a three-part story that humanizes and recounts a history that has shaped a modern nation in need of a reminder that we all share the orenda. Through his characters, Boyden passionately fights to convey this understanding in order to break a centuries-long cycle of hatred and violence, and mend the heart of a broken land and a dispersed people.