Michael Crummey’s River Thieves in the light of rescue history

• Published in: Crossroads. A Journal of English Studies
• Main Author: Feldman-Kołodziejuk, Ewelina
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The University of Bialystok 2016
• Subjects: rescue history; affirmative history; Beothuks; Demasduit; First Nations; Atwood; Canada; Fontana; Indian; Macey; Newfoundland; Beothuk
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11320/5998; https://doi.org/10.15290/cr.2016.14.3.02

Born and raised in Newfoundland and Labrador, Michael Crummey uses his inside knowledge to describe the region’s peculiarities in vivid detail. All four of his novels are set in Newfoundland and weave a story of its inhabitants throughout different moments in the island’s history. Though Crummey’s prose is broadly characterized as historical fiction, his novels differ from their traditional counterparts. This article aims to invite a reading of Crummey’s works through the prism of rescue history, a concept recently introduced by a Polish scholar, Ewa Domańska. Rescue history, drawing on frontier and post-colonial studies among others, is preoccupied with local, potential, existential and affirmative history whose goal is to rescue the future. Although the concept of rescue history encompasses a variety of disciplines and activities, this article will focus on the literary realization of the notion of rescue history in Crummey’s debut novel River Thieves, published in 2002. Based on historical accounts of Captain David Buchan’s expedition to Red Indian Lake, whose aim was to encourage trade and put an end to hostilities between English settlers and Beothuks, the novel encourages a compassionate revisiting of the chronicled events. Weaving an intricate web of human relations and dependencies, Crummey manages to restore agency to those who are situated on the periphery either due to gender, status or origin, thus reminding the reader that we are all capable of changing the course of history. [e-mail] Ewelina Feldman-Kołodziejuk is a teacher at the Institute of Modern Languages, at the University of Białystok, where she runs practical grammar and General English courses. She is also a doctoral student working on her dissertation devoted to the fiction of Margaret Atwood. Her primaryarea of academic interest is North American literature and culture. She is the author of several articles that oscillate around the themes of motherhood and mother-daughter relations. In 2015 she was awarded a scholarship from the Corbridge Trust in Cambridge. University of Białystok Chafe, Paul. 2004. “Lament for a Notion: Loss and the Beothuk in Michael Crummey’s River Thieves.” Essays on Canadian Writing 82 (Spring), 93-117. Crummey, Michael. 2003. The River Thieves. Edinburgh: Canongate. Crummey, Michael. 2012. “Our symbiotic relationship with the stories that we tell.” An Interview by Cynthia Sugars. Canadian Literature 212 (Spring), 105-119. 28 Feb. 2016. prima.uwb.edu.pl:2124/ehost/detail/detail?vid=4&sid=d1f349d2-d303-4e19-9fa8-1231eea21261sessionmgr101&hid=124&bdata=Jmxhbmc9cGwmc2l0ZT1laG9zdC1saXZl#AN=78296008&db=a9h Crummey, Michael. 2014. “Author Michael Crummey brings his own life into tale of smalltown Newfoundland.” Interview by Eric Volmers. Calgary Herald 25 Aug. 2014. 28 Feb. 2016. www.calgaryherald.com/news/Author+Michael+Crummey+brings+life+into+tale+small+town+Newfoundland /10141933/story.html Domańska, Ewa. 2014. “Historia ratownicza.” Teksty Drugie 5, 12-26. Foucault, Michel. 2003. Society Must Be Defended. Lectures at the College de France, 1975-76. Ed. Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana. Trans. David Macey. New York: Picador. hooks, bell. 1990. Yearning: Race, Gender and Cultural Politics. Boston, MA: South End Press. Sugars, Cynthia. 2005. “Original Sin, or, The Last of the First Ancestors: Michael Crummey’s River Thieves.” English Studies in Canada 31.4 (Dec.), 147-175. White, Kenneth. 1992. “Elements of Geopoetics.” Edinburgh Review 88, 163-178. 20-27 14 (3/2016) 20 27