Now a television mini-series airing on National Geographic May 2020!
A Washington Post Best Book of the Year & a New York Times Notable Book
From the Pulitzer Prizeāwinning author of The Shipping News and āBrokeback Mountain,ā comes the New York Times bestselling epic about the demise of the worldās forests: āBarkskins is grand entertainment in the tradition of Dickens and Tolstoyā¦the crowning achievement of Annie Proulxās distinguished career, but also perhaps the greatest environmental novel ever writtenā (San Francisco Chronicle).
In the late seventeenth century two young Frenchmen, RenĆ© Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cuttersābarkskins. RenĆ© suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a native woman and their descendants live trapped between two cultures. But Duquet runs away, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Annie Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over three hundred yearsātheir travels across North America, to Europe, China, and New Zealandāthe revenge of rivals, accidents, pestilence, Indian attacks, and cultural annihilation. Over and over, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face to face with possible ecological collapse.
āA stunning, bracing, full-tilt ride through three hundred years of US and Canadian historyā¦with the type of full-immersion plot that keeps you curled in your chair, reluctant to stop readingā (Elle), Barkskins showcases Proulxās inimitable genius of creating characters who are so vivid that we follow them with fierce attention. āThis is Proulx at the height of her powers as an irreplaceable American voiceā (Entertainment Weekly, Grade A), and Barkskins āis an awesome monument of a bookā (The Washington Post)āāthe masterpiece she was meant to writeā (The Boston Globe). As Anthony Doerr says, āThis magnificent novel possesses the dark humor of The Shipping News and the social awareness of āBrokeback Mountain.āā