P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class=MsoNormal>It’s the 1960s and 21 testosterone-drenched high school graduates are bussed into Washika Bay, a company logging camp where they will work for the summer. Idealistic, confident, and sometimes troubled, the young men meet their matches in tough older bush workers and cope with a devastating forest fire, sand flies, and leeches. Henri Morin is particularly sensitive and, though a hard worker, appears to harbor dark thoughts, and another young man’s moving love story is carefully told. In no other place could the transition from adolescence to adulthood be the same. Through its characters and their experiences, this book has revived an era and inspired new life into a wild and beautiful place.

Robert A. Poirier was born and raised in Maniwaki, Quebec. Although Washika is his first novel, he has been writing short stories for many years. After studying science as a mature student at Carleton University (Ottawa), he moved back to Maniwaki where he co-founded the local Ambulance Cooperative. He also worked with Alaskan Malamut sled dogs and organized winter camping trips mostly for Europeans. Bob Poirier taught Math and Science in the local high school for nineteen years. Fluent in English and French, he is also learning Algonquin and has embraced the spiritual practices of the Anishinabeg people since 2000. He runs a small Wild Animal Rehabilitation Centre on his land, treating and caring for all species of wild animals and birds of prey.

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"The reader can smell and taste the meals, feel the weather, and accompany the crew on the rough landscape. . . . A touch of poetry to the writing . . . Washika becomes a coming-of-age story, and a poignant one at that. . . . The cover art, a painting of a tug on the river, is lovely and befits the story and era, as does each photograph at the beginning of a new section." —www.ForewordReviews.com