Running
two steps ahead of the bailiff, alternately praised and reviled
by critics, John James Audubon set himself the audacious task of
drawing, from nature, every bird in North America. The result was
his masterpiece, The Birds of America, which he and his family published
and sold to subscribers on both sides of the Atlantic. In June 1833,
he enlisted his son and a party of young gentlemen to set sail for
nesting grounds no ornithologist had ever seen, in the treacherous
passage between Newfoundland and Labrador.
Fogbound at Little Natashquan, he encounters Captain Henry Wolsey
Bayfield of the Royal Navy, whose mission is to chart the labyrinthine
coast to make it safe for sea traffic. Bayfield is an exacting and
duty-bound aristocrat; the charismatic Audubon spins tales to disguise
his dubious parentage and lack of training. Bayfield is a confirmed
bachelor; Audubon is a married man in love with his young assistant.
But the captain becomes the artist’s foil and his measuring stick,
his judge and, oddly, the recipient of his long-held secrets.
In this atmospheric and enthralling novel, Katherine Govier recreates
the summer in which “the world’s greatest living bird artist” finally
understood the paradox embedded in his art: that the act of creation
was also an act of destruction.
REVIEW QUOTES
“Creation is a tour de force, a finely written historical
account that plays, for a serious purpose, with the very nature
of historical inquiry and humanity’s place in the natural order.
For all its absence of proof, it is a deeply convincing story.”
-- Maclean's
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Katherine Govier is an acclaimed novelist, short story writer and
journalist, who was born and raised in Alberta. She has lived in
Washington, D.C., and London, England, and currently lives in Toronto.
She is the winner of the Marian Engel Award for a woman writer in
mid-career and the City of Toronto Book Award for her novel Hearts
of Flame, among other honours. Creation is her seventh
novel. |