Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul eBook David Adams Richards
Download As PDF : Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul eBook David Adams Richards 
Highly charged and profoundly important, Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul is a new masterpiece from one of Canada’s greatest writers.
On a bright morning in June 1985, a young Micmac man starts his first day of work—but by noon he is dead, killed mysteriously in the fourth hold of the cargo ship Lutheran. Hector Penniac had been planning to go to university, perhaps to study medicine. Roger Savage, a loner who has had to make his own way since his youth, comes under suspicion of killing Hector over a union card and a morning’s work. Even if he can’t quite put it into words, Roger immediately sees the ways in which Hector’s death will be viewed as symbolic, as more than an isolated tragedy—and that he is caught in a chain of events that will become more explosive with each passing day.
The aging chief of Hector’s band, Amos Paul, tries to reduce the tensions raised by the investigation into Hector’s death and its connection to a host of other simmering issues, from territorial lines to fishing rights. His approach leads him into conflict with Isaac Snow, a younger and more dynamic man whom many in the band would prefer to lead them—especially when the case attracts press attention in the form of an ambitious journalist named Max Doran, the first of many outsiders to bring his own agenda and motives onto the Micmac reserve. Joel Ginnish, Isaac’s volatile and sometimes violent friend, decides to bring justice to Roger Savage when the authorities refuse to, blockading the reserve in order to do so. And though perhaps no one really means for it to happen, soon a single incident grows ineluctably into a crisis that engulfs a whole society, a whole province and in some ways a whole country.
Twenty years later, RCMP officer Markus Paul—Chief Amos Paul’s grandson, who was fifteen years old when Hector was killed—tries to piece together the clues surrounding Hector Penniac’s death. The decades have passed, and much about the case has been twisted beyond recognition by the many ways that different people have sought to exploit it. But, haunted by the past, Markus still struggles towards a truth that will snap “those chains that had once seemed impossible to break.” (290)
This is a novel that begins with an instant from today’s headlines, and digs down into the marrow to explore the oldest themes we know murder and betrayal, race and history, the brutal and chaotic forces that guide the groups we are drawn into. Nothing is one-sided in David Adams Richards’ world—even the most scheming characters have moments of grace, while the most benevolent are shown to have selfish motives, or the need to show off their goodness. All are depicted with an almost Biblical gravity, framed by an understated genius of storytelling that makes this novel at once both an utterly gripping mystery, and a vitally important document of Canada’s broken past and divided present.
Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul eBook David Adams Richards
I really don't know what to say about this book. It came to me highly recommended by numerous people because they know I am a big fan of Canadian literature. I know that David Adams Richards is a wonderful novelist. His stories are stark and bleak, and they don't always have happy endings. His books are difficult to read because they are filled with sadness and hopelessness and this one is no different. Even the ending in this book seems to return full circle to that terrible summer of 1985 along the Mirimichi River. The story goes back and forth seamlessly from summer and fall of 1985 to the year 2007 as we follow the life of Markus Paul. In 1985 Markus is only 15 years old. His mother and father are dead and he lives with his wise old grandfather Amos Paul who happens to the chief of the Micmac reserve they live on. This story is about guilt and lies, but it is also about the giant chasm between the native Canadians and their white neighbours. This is certainly not a new story, but it is one that hasn't changed much over one hundred years. A young 17 year old Micmac boy is killed in a workplace accident while he was unloading pulp on a vessel. The hold he was working on held five people, including himself-3 white males, 1 small child and Hector Penniac. Somehow Hector ends up dead and the repercussions of his death rock the First Nations reserve as well as their close white neighbours. Lives are changed forever with this terrible tragedy and it takes 21 years and the perseverance of Marcus Paul, now a decorated RCMP officer, to finally solve the puzzle of what happened on board the Lutheran. By that time 2 people had lost their lives as a result of the incident, and Amos Paul, Markus' grandfather has died. It was Amos that knew that something wasn't right about the 4th hold. He held onto that idea until he died even though it caused him to lose his position as chief and also it caused the people on his reserve to turn away from him. Amos was too meek and mild to get his point across, and instead it was left to the bullies and misguided young men on the Reserve to take action. That is what caused all the death, distrust and damage. The wrong solution to the crime won out over the right one because the men who propounded their solution were loud and made sure that their point was the one that was put forth. It forever changed lives of many people that were touched by the tragedy and resulted in hopelessness and despair to those left on the reserve. Markus' determination to solve the crime finally bears fruit, and the truth will help his community to heal. That is the happy ending that we get in this book. The happy ending doesn't come to Markus Paul. We see so clearly how small actions and the resulting cover-up can send shock waves through a community. We learn that "it's not the trap that kills the beaver, but the drowning that follows."Product details
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Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul eBook David Adams Richards Reviews
Living in Scotland, I got homesick for Maritime Canada and went to Blackwell's to see if they had any books by David Adams Richards. They had one, in the crime section, Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul. I mentioned it should have been in literature. "No, it's in our system as murder mystery," the clerk said.
In a sense, Incidents is a murder mystery, a genre the author says he never intended when setting out to write it. The premise appears simple an effete First Nations boy in Miramachi, New Brunswick gets a union card and starts work loading lumber in the hold of a Dutch ship. He dies on his first day of work, crushed by a load of poorly-hooked wood. Or so it seems. The narrator offers clues and possibilities indicating that something is wrong with this analysis. These indicators punctuate a story revolving around the man who becomes the primary suspect, the people who wish to see him condemned, and the people who believe he's innocent.
Welcome to the world of one Canada's greatest storytellers. David Adams Richards, now with a stockpile of awards and several film adaptations, has been writing about the lives of so-called ordinary people in rural New Brunswick for four decades. His novels comprise polished-up social realism with elements of morality plays. The tone is Biblical in places, folksy in others, luminously descriptive, and perennially compelling. The people and places are raw and real, and the author employs the Maritime vernacular, habitually for dialogue, occasionally for narration and description. On trial is human corruption. Doing the right thing seems easy, so why is it so rare?
I'm a fan of David Adams Richards because I admire his story telling and find his tales relatable. I'm not from the Miramachi, but can relate to the working-class attitudes and beliefs his characters exude. They are products of their environment and only a few have the ability to externalize their situation. In Incidents, we find an all-too-realistic cast police who formulate convenient theories and ignore contrary evidence; neighbours who vilify the main suspect even though there's no evidence to make an arrest; the suspect himself, who never knew his father, whose mother is no good, whose girlfriend loses faith in him because she doesn't want to associate with someone who the community (including a faction of criminals) now despises; naive and jockeying journalists from "down south" (Saint John), meddling newspaper owners, an indifferent public, racist white Canadians, venal First Nations' Canadians, moronic Fredericton professors and their brainless, activist students - and, unlikely heroes.
I couldn't, as they say, put Incidents in the Life of Markus Paul down. Like with the author's Mercy Among the Children, I was transported back to my native New Brunswick and captivated by his artistic, yet sobering social realism. I loved all the local references (and a portion of the book is set in my hometown of Saint John), but you don't have to be from New Brunswick or Canada to appreciate Richards's writing, as his popularity abroad attests. I look forward to reading more of David Adams Richards's fiction, perhaps Friends of Meagre Fortune or The Lost Highway. I have also read and can recommend Nights Below Station Street.
Troy Parfitt is the author of Why China Will Never Rule the World
I really don't know what to say about this book. It came to me highly recommended by numerous people because they know I am a big fan of Canadian literature. I know that David Adams Richards is a wonderful novelist. His stories are stark and bleak, and they don't always have happy endings. His books are difficult to read because they are filled with sadness and hopelessness and this one is no different. Even the ending in this book seems to return full circle to that terrible summer of 1985 along the Mirimichi River. The story goes back and forth seamlessly from summer and fall of 1985 to the year 2007 as we follow the life of Markus Paul. In 1985 Markus is only 15 years old. His mother and father are dead and he lives with his wise old grandfather Amos Paul who happens to the chief of the Micmac reserve they live on. This story is about guilt and lies, but it is also about the giant chasm between the native Canadians and their white neighbours. This is certainly not a new story, but it is one that hasn't changed much over one hundred years. A young 17 year old Micmac boy is killed in a workplace accident while he was unloading pulp on a vessel. The hold he was working on held five people, including himself-3 white males, 1 small child and Hector Penniac. Somehow Hector ends up dead and the repercussions of his death rock the First Nations reserve as well as their close white neighbours. Lives are changed forever with this terrible tragedy and it takes 21 years and the perseverance of Marcus Paul, now a decorated RCMP officer, to finally solve the puzzle of what happened on board the Lutheran. By that time 2 people had lost their lives as a result of the incident, and Amos Paul, Markus' grandfather has died. It was Amos that knew that something wasn't right about the 4th hold. He held onto that idea until he died even though it caused him to lose his position as chief and also it caused the people on his reserve to turn away from him. Amos was too meek and mild to get his point across, and instead it was left to the bullies and misguided young men on the Reserve to take action. That is what caused all the death, distrust and damage. The wrong solution to the crime won out over the right one because the men who propounded their solution were loud and made sure that their point was the one that was put forth. It forever changed lives of many people that were touched by the tragedy and resulted in hopelessness and despair to those left on the reserve. Markus' determination to solve the crime finally bears fruit, and the truth will help his community to heal. That is the happy ending that we get in this book. The happy ending doesn't come to Markus Paul. We see so clearly how small actions and the resulting cover-up can send shock waves through a community. We learn that "it's not the trap that kills the beaver, but the drowning that follows."
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