Frederick E. Bryson
Frederick E. Bryson brings a curiosity about the Quiet Revolution that swept Quebec, and the October Crisis that followed. “Society in flux is always fodder for storytelling,” he notes, “but Montreal in October, 1970, may be the closest we’ve come in North America to outright insurrection since the American Civil War.”
His first novel, Scent of the River, is the story of an Amerindian who resisted eviction from the tribe’s ancestral homeland in Southern Appalachia by the US Army in 1838. The book appeared in 2003. A sequel, Wind in the Web, describes a quest to recover the essential spirit of the dispossessed tribe.
The creative spark for Crossing to Tadoussac, Bryson’s third novel, followed his move to Montreal and subsequent discovery that Quebecois have an enormous passion of place. “Where we live molds us,” asserts Bryson, “and Canada offers a treasure of discovery.”
Five years in the writing, Crossing to Tadoussac is a story about the Separatist Movement in the late 1960s to the 1990s, from the perspective of a remarkably assertive young woman who comes of age during this sulfurous period.
Today, Bryson lives in Montreal and is building a boat when not working on two novel projects. One is a character spin-off of Crossing, and the second is a long-developing historical reprise of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin.
Photo © Francine St-Pierre
