Burning Water

by George Bowering

Book Overview

First published in 1980 to high acclaim, Burning Water won a Governor General's Award for fiction that year. A rollicking chronicle of Captain Vancouver's search for the Northwest Passage, the book... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1554200369
• ISBN13: 9781554200368
• Release Date: October 2007
• Publisher: New Star Books
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.

Customer Reviews

European Invaders

Burning Water is a book for readers who like their history leavened with imagination. The basic story is of the mapping of the Inside Passage and Puget Sound by George Vancouver, but this book is much more than that. The character of Vancouver himself is interesting and quite believable: Competent and tormented, autocratic and lovelorn, he worms his way into your heart almost despite himself. Residents of the Pacific Northwest will never think of Peter Puget and sundry other characters who have leant their names to various Northwestern geographical features in the same way again. This is the rare book that mixes the story of the European explorers with that of the Indigenous peoples who occupied these lands long before they were "discovered" by Europeans. This book is often funny and irreverent, but it can also be heart-rending and tragic. I think most people interested in the Pacific Northwest and/or Canadian History will find it a good reading experience. On the other hand I suspect that readers of British Naval history might be offended. this is not Master and Commander, but neither is it a Flashman adventure.