Greg Parkes, Plumes of Dust (2021)
1745. James Schoolcraft is apprenticed to Jacob Wyngaart, master sawyer at Mr Schuyler’s mill in Saratoga. Beyond the trading post ten miles north upstream, there was ‘nothing but a wilderness of bears, wolves and Indians as far as Montreal’. His ambition, after completing his apprenticeship, is to return home to Schoharie and build a sawmill there. He has his eye on the Wyngaarts’ daughter Rachel.
An attack by French soldiers and Indians invades their peaceful breakfast, and the wife Greta is killed, Rachel abducted by the Indians and Mr Schuyler’s house and the sawmill torched. James and the rest of the Dutch villagers are taken captive by the French.
Rachel is taken by Tekanatoken to be his adopted daughter, before she leaves, pledging her love to James. She escapes from one master only to be enslaved by another. She talks to the ghosts of the women who went before her.
James and Jacob’s family are among those sent to Quebec, where James makes the acquaintance of Mrs Mercy Weaver, who, she admits, ‘lies with men’.
Rachel is called by different names according to which man is her master, which made me think she accepted her bondage. I wondered if her talking to ghosts was a sign of emotional deterioration. Were they ghosts? Were they jealous spirits from another realm determined to ruin her? Were they alternate personalities?
The Indian attack scene is a bit thrown away, without any suspense built, and thus, we don’t feel the outrage that we might do at Rachel’s abduction. Despite being based on the historical Raid on Saratoga during King George’s War and the characters in the story being based on real historical people, in chapter one we don’t get a sense of this event’s place in history. For the rest of the novel, we do get a real sense of the period—the hardships, indignities and boredom of prison life, the insecurity of people in times of war, the extremes that human beings are capable of surviving.
Susie Helme 
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