The Chase of Saint-Castin and Other Stories of the French in the New World

In the misty April woods of colonial North America, a French baron named Saint-Castin has gone native, living among the Abenaqui people as one of their own. When his companion La Hontan discovers the secluded lodge of the chief's daughter, a woman both reverenced and guarded by her tribe, tensions between cultures erupt into something more dangerous: desire, curiosity, and the collision of worlds that can never fully understand each other. Catherwood writes with sensuous precision about this liminal space where French hunters and indigenous peoples negotiate trust, trade, and tenderness in the vast northern wilderness. The collection spans stories of early French Canada, where missionaries proselytize, fur traders barter, and settlers struggle to maintain European identities in lands that reshape them. These are tales of impossible love across cultural divides, of women caught between worlds, of French colonial ambition meeting the ancient endurance of native peoples. Catherwood, writing at the height of late 19th-century historical romance, captures a moment in North American history when the continent's future remained unwritten and encounters between peoples still held the charge of genuine mystery.