Barkskins: A Novel

Now a television mini-series airing on National Geographic May 2020! A _Washington Post_ Best Book of the Year and a _New York Times_ Notable Book from the Pulitzer Prize-­­winning author of _The Shipping News_ and _Brokeback Mountain_ comes the_ New York Times_ best-selling epic about the demise of the world’s forests. “_Barkskins_ is grand entertainment in the tradition of Dickens and Tolstoy…the crowning achievement of Annie Proulx’s distinguished career, but also perhaps the greatest environmental novel ever written.” (_San Francisco Chronicle_). In the late 17th century, two young Frenchmen, René Sel and Charles Duquet, arrive in New France. Bound to a feudal lord for three years in exchange for land, they become wood-cutters — barkskins. René suffers extraordinary hardship, oppressed by the forest he is charged with clearing. He is forced to marry a native woman and their descendants live trapped between two cultures. But Duquet runs away, becomes a fur trader, then sets up a timber business. Annie Proulx tells the stories of the descendants of Sel and Duquet over 300 years — their travels across North America, to Europe, China, and New Zealand — the revenge of rivals, accidents, pestilence, Indian attacks, and cultural annihilation. Over and over, they seize what they can of a presumed infinite resource, leaving the modern-day characters face to face with possible ecological collapse. “A stunning, bracing, full-tilt ride through three hundred years of US and Canadian history…with the type of full-immersion plot that keeps you curled in your chair, reluctant to stop reading” (_Elle_), _Barkskins_ showcases Proulx’s inimitable genius of creating characters who are so vivid that we follow them with fierce attention. “This is Proulx at the height of her powers as an irreplaceable American voice” (_Entertainment Weekly_, Grade A), and _Barkskins_ “is an awesome monument of a book” (_The Washington Post_) — “the masterpiece she was meant to write” (_The Boston Globe_). As Anthony Doerr says, “This magnificent novel possesses the dark humor of_ The Shipping News_ and the social awareness of _Brokeback Mountain_."