Wild People Quiet
After a tragedy strikes her family in her Métis village, Florence Capeau begins to resist her Native identity. While still a girl, she finds a way to escape and begins her struggle to pass for white in segregated early 20th-century Saskatchewan.
Prohibited from attending school, she develops another kind of literacy: beading. She tucks that talent away and saves enough working as a hotel maid to attend secretarial school. Leaving her family behind and bleaching her hair, she becomes the widowed Mrs. Banks, a top secretary in the town of Regina. When her brother Clancy turns up, darker than Florence and easily identified as Métis, he is refused service in the café where she sits with her fellow employees. Their eyes meet, but she does not acknowledge him. Her livelihood, friends, and the career she has so carefully created will be in jeopardy if the truth is known. Yet can she so easily dismiss her family? Alternating chapters between her girlhood from 1908 to 1913, and 1946 when she is established in Regina, reveal Florence’s challenges in maintaining her chosen identity in the community and in her soul.
“Wild People Quiet” were the words of the Canadian Prime Minister in 1869, referring to the difficulties controlling the Métis, and some forty years later control is still being enforced on the “wild people.” This fine novel transports readers to a time of glaring prejudice as seen through the eyes of Florence who exists on both sides of the line—an impossible balancing act. The beautifully described Métis art of beading plays a significant role throughout the story, and Michif (the language of the Métis) phrases appear occasionally, adding to the atmosphere. Highly recommended for Tara Gereaux’s moving depiction of a racist era and one family caught in its snares.
