Jennifer Maruno

The night before her birthday celebration, the police arrest her father. Within days he must leave for labor camp in the mountains.

Michiko’s mother, with the help of a stranger, moves her family to a farmhouse in the country. Michiko, her Grandfather, Aunt Sadie, and baby brother Hiro all endure hunger, hardship, racial taunts and the worst Canadian winter in forty years.

Throughout it all, Michiko is uncertain of her origin. Should she be proud or hide it?

The men are sent to work on the railway, so the women and children are left to make the trip on their own.

After a former Asahi baseball star becomes her new teacher, life gets better. Baseball fever hits town, and when Michiko challenges the adults to a game with her class, the whole town turns out.

Then the government announces that they must move once again. But they can’t think of relocating with a new baby coming, even with the offer of free passage to Japan. Michiko pretends to be her mother and writes to get a job for her father on a farm in Ontario. When he is accepted, they again pack their belongings and head to a new life in Ontario.

At the crack of dawn Etienne, not the orphan, paddles out into the St. Lawrence with the famous voyageur, Médard des Groseilliers right into the heart of the land of the Huron.

At Sainte Marie, Etienne meets a Huron youth named both Tsiko and Thomas. From him, Etienne learns true wilderness life and how to respect nature.

From Father Francesco Bressani, Father Antoine Daniel, and Father Jean de Brébeuf, he learns the life of piety, although other priests engage in shocking practices of conversion.

After escaping the Iroquois, witnessing the destruction of the village of Teanaustaye and death of Father Daniel, those at the mission waited for a second attack. Etienne decides he must take his fate into his own hands before the shadow of the cross falls across him as well. He breaks his vows of dedication and leaves the mission with his Huron friend, Tsiko. But first, the boys must get past the raiding Iroquois.

At the trading post, Etienne and Tsiko part ways. Unsure of what waits for him at home, Etienne returns to Quebec.
WARBIRD, a historical fiction for readers 8-12 years of age, is about life at Sainte- Marie. It is also about the relationship between Etienne and a Christian Huron youth named Thomas. From him, Etienne learns true wilderness life and how to respect nature. From the Jesuits, Etienne learns to lead a life of piety. When the Iroquois attack a nearby village and kill Father Daniel, Etienne learns about war.
Today, one is able to stand in the midst of Sainte-Marie’s replicated buildings and get a true sense of the age.

After a truck load of firewood lands on top of him, Jonny wakes in the infirmary to find an old man beside his bed. Jonny has seen this man with the long flowing hair before watching from the woods but the other boys claim he’s a ghost. He tells Jonny a strange story and gives him an arrow head. Jonny hopes the man is a long-lost relation, until he also realizes no one else can see him.

The unwanted companionship and too-friendly advances of Father Gregory over the summer holidays disturb Jonny, as does his strange dream of a wolf. He joins Ernie, the only other boy at school for the summer, in an escape to a mountain cave. When Jonny and Ernie leave the cave the next morning, the world they knew no longer exists.

Kalaku, no longer a ghost, takes Jonny and Ernie to the winter village of the native people across the bay They witness the raising of a totem pole in honour of a new chief; a pole Kalaku has carved and they take part in a potlatch ceremony. Jonny follows the old man to his house in the forest to apprentice. There he becomes skilled in the art of carving and discovers his animal spirit.

When a steamship enters the cove, the party of sightseers includes a photographer, government surveyor and an old miner looking to homestead. With them come a priest, two nuns, and a disease that annihilates most of the people in the village.

Jonny and Ernie return to the cave in the mountain to wait for and warn Kalaku of the deadly disease. But after a night of thunderstorms, they find themselves back in the present.

To their surprise Redemption Residential has been hit by lightening and burned to the ground. Both boys are now free to follow their own path of life.

To honour the people of the ancient village, Jonny carves a totem pole for their lost burial grounds. His talented reputation draws a girl to his side. A girl who holds the key to his true parentage.