I first heard of this book in 2021 when it was on the shortlist for the GG prize for translation (French to English). However, it might have never made it to my reading pile except that the translator, Susan Ouriou, also translated the book that won the 2024 Canada Reads, The Future. I was very impressed by the seamlessness of that translation and I thought I'd see what else she had worked on.

Really, the title says everything you need to know about this book. Take a lake, a man and a woman who meet on its shores, and let the inevitable happen. The man is Gabriel, a Metis trapper, who was canoeing back home on Lake Abitibi when wild winds whip the water into a frenzy. A group of Anishinaabe women who are watching from the shore includes Wabougouni and her grandmother, Zagkigan Ikwe. Wabougouni is instantly attracted to Gabriel even though she is married and pregnant. The men are all away from the village to sell the winter's furs at the nearest trading station.Gabriel falls fast asleep after his lake endeavours but Wabougouni creeps into the tent where he is sleeping and rouses him (in more ways than one). They spend an idyllic few days together but then Gabriel must return to his home. World War II has started and he is determined to take part in it. Additionally, the men will soon be back and it's unlikely Wabougouni's husband would look kindly upon a lover in his wife's bed. Gabriel is a poet and an artist and he composes a poem to commemorate his love:
You have been my moth my butterfly
of fire
Shining in the heart of my twilights
Entrancing through mystery and freedom
You the beauty daughter of the forest
Your red mane and skin the colour of earth
A forever source of dazzlement for me
Deep in your soft belly, hungry for joy...

That section is almost half-way through this short book. The rest of the book covers the years of the war and Gabriel's return when he learns that Wabougouni is free. And he flies to her where she waits for him.

In the preface the author says she chose to set her book in this time period because it was set in a world as yet untouched by Indian residential schools when Indigenous peoples were able "to live freely in the untouched, grandiose natural world of Abitibi." That's what reconciliation should eventually look like. ( )

This book was heralded as the first erotic novel written by a francophone Indigenous woman. I read the English translation which has just been published.

This book tells a typical love story...Wabougouni, an Anishnaabe woman, meets Gabriel, a Metis man, they fall in love, they are separated, they find each other in the end. But wow! What beautiful writing, so poetic and sensual. We follow Gabriel to his home community where he deals with racism, and to World War I. We learn about traditional values in Wabougouni's community and about the abuse flowing from colonization. This short novel is so powerful on so many levels. Read it! ( )