Author: Major John Richardson
ISBN: 0-915317-15-X
PRICE: $9.95 Cdn & US
John Richardson's border tale, Westbrook, the Outlaw, was his last novel. Published a year after his death, which took place in New York City in May 1852, its loss for over a century and discovery in 1973 is told by David Beasley, Richardson's biographer, in the preface. Richardson, the first Canadian novelist, produced brilliant works, including the often reissued Wacousta, but he had to leave Canada for the United States to find publishers.
The real Andrew Westbrook, a Canadian traitor during the War of 1812, led raiding parties of Americans up the Thames River Valley to burn mills and houses, and to kidnap the richer inhabitants to hold for ransom in the States. He was a tall, powerful, red-headed, rebellious person whom Richardson fictionalizes as a domestic tyrant, murderer, and rapist. Richardson recreates the time, the setting and the characters vividly, and, thereby, gives Canadians a rare and important picture of their past. The novel will be of particular interest to highschool and university students, first, for its vigorous recreation of an important period in Canada's past, and, second, for Richardson's literary talent which dominated Canadian writing for the first half of the nineteenth century and blazed the way for Canada's future novelists.
