Louis Riel -- 1844-1885 -- Fiction, Louis Riel -- 1844-1885, Riel Resistance 1885 -- Fiction, Riel Resistance 1885, Fiction 

"Joe Campbell was a real westerner. Born in the Hudson's Bay Territory, he didn't think much of them damn Canadians who were trickling into the West, especially if they were from Ontario. More to his taste were men like Louis Riel, who had once worked for his Campbell brothers. Joe liked and respected Riel - maybe because they were both one-eighth Chipewyan.

In the fall of 1884, Joe set out from Fort Benton, Missouri, to see how things were in Canada, as his brother was thinking of moving the family business north of the line. But his brother insisted that Joe take his twelve-year-old nephew along with him. Joe thought the boy was "weak in the head and other places" and refused; he cursed and ranted but in the end he gave in.

Many years later the nephew recalls, in a marvelously dead-pan account, the hair-raising adventures and hilarious misadventures that landed the two of them smack in the middle of the Riel Rebellion. How they escaped and how they ensured that their old friend was given a proper burial form the core around which James McNamee has woven this colourful and enormously funny novel. In the process he may well have created a new folk hero for the Canadian West."--Book jacket.