Specimen Song

Gabriel Du Pre is sweating, suffocating, and feeling not a little foolish at the Folk Life Festival in Washington, D.C. Far from his native Montana, he has flown east at the invitation of a fellow from the Smithsonian who admires Du Pre's fiddle playing and his Metis Indian heritage. Plus, the gig pays five hundred and expenses.
Du Pre's much-prized native instincts come in handy when a runaway horse disrupts the festival - but then he finds himself being questioned by police, for the horse belonged to a young Cree woman from Canada who has been found murdered. To complicate matters, the Smithsonian man, Paul Chase, asks Du Pre to record some of his old voyageur ballads for the museum's archives. Du Pre returns to Montana feeling that he has left behind unfinished business and has sold a precious part of himself.
Thankfully, Du Pre finds Montana unchanged and his lover, Madelaine, anxious to make up for lost time. But then Paul Chase calls again: Will Du Pre join him and a group of others on a canoe trip through Canada, following a portion of the old fur-trade route where the voyageurs sang their songs? The prospect of an authentic wilderness experience holds little appeal, but Du Pre figures he may learn something, and so agrees. What he discovers on the trip - about Chase, his companions, and himself - leads Du Pre on a Journey through history and native myth, toward the truth about a murderer.