The Uncharted Heart

The stories in The Uncharted Heart bring to life the harsh struggles, the dreams, the greed, the obsessions, the xenophobia — and the love — experienced by the traders, trappers and prospectors who flocked to northern Ontario during the Porcupine Gold Rush (1900-1922)."The Uncharted Heart" (the genesis of which lies in a true story) tells of a government surveyor's magical encounter with a French woman of native heritage who has survived alone in the bush after the sudden death of her trapper husband and children. "The Ice Woman"is the tale of an Ojibway nebaunaube — a lake mermaid — discovered encased in a block of ice by a fur trader at the edge of a lake during the spring thaw. In "Paper Son," a Chinese houseboy to a small-town doctor and his sick wife alleviates her pain by making opium from the poppies in her garden. In "Traplines," a trapper's wife uses her wits to defend herself and her child from the advances of a violent neighbour suspected of possessing supernatural powers.Distinctively Canadian, yet universal in appeal, the stories in The Uncharted Heart are about what it is to be human.