Flight From The Fortress

From Amazon In her latest novel for middle readers, veteran children's writer Lyn Cook delves into the checkered history of the fortified town of Louisbourg, on Canada's East Coast. The second of her books to be set in New France (the first was The Hiding Place), Flight from the Fortress reflects Cook's fascination with the lives of ordinary people swept up in the French-English wars of the 18th century. Her hero Philippe, who is a young teen in 1758, has ties to both sides. The son of a French mother and an English soldier, he has traveled in stealth to the French-controlled fortress hoping to reunite with his father, whom he believes to be working as a spy for the British fleet. While searching for a hole in the walls, he has two fateful encounters that set him on a new course--he rescues a beautiful French girl, Gaby, from drowning and is saved, in turn, by a black slave boy. Cook has clearly done her research and the scenes of daily life inside the besieged fortress are graphic and compelling. Her desire to impart information about the period, however, too often interferes with character development. Philippe and Gaby seem more like costumed tour guides than real 18th-century kids fleeing a battlefield with a stolen slave and two sleeping babies. Moreover, apart from the naval attack itself, the novel offers little in the way of conflict. Everyone Philippe's "little family" meets on their flight--from a gruff deserter to the mysterious white-robed monk--is sympathetically portrayed as yet another victim of Europe's colonial politics. Consequently, the children's ultimate deliverance has the air of an historical reenactment rather than a thrilling denouement. For historical fiction with a deeper ring of truth, readers are advised to turn to earlier Cook novels such as her classic The Bells on Finland Street. --Lisa Alward Product Description A Canadian Children's Book Centre Our Choice 2005 Lyn Cook's newest book takes place during the second seige of the Fortress of Louisbourg, 1757. Like others of her books, the story began as a tribute to a beloved place, which Lyn Cook watched grow from a neglected pile of rubble to one of the most exciting living museums in Canada. The Fortress of Louisbourg was once the bustling gateway to a string of prosperous New World settlements. In 1713, it became the battleground in a winner-take-all war between French and English. The prize? A trade monopoly in the natural resources all of Europe was begging for. Caught in the crossfire were the citizens of Louisbourg, their wives and their children: merchants, shipwrights, adventurers and settlers, tinkers, tailors, soldiers-and spies. In Flight From the Fortress, a French boy comes looking for his English father, a spy for the British. He meets Gaby, a young girl caring for two orphaned infants, and together, they decide to flee the fortress, and find refuge in the forests beyond. As they travel, Philippe's care for Gaby and her charges grows, but never extinguishes his hope of finding his father. He will suffer many dangers and disappointments before he is ready, like Gaby, to take the way out offered him. Review "Lyn Cook takes historical details and weaves them into an adventure filled tale of survival in the face of monumental loss...This book renders a vivid picture of this time and place and realistically portrays the stark, bloody ugliness of war...an interesting look at this historically significant event from the point of view of a couple of ordinary citizens, and what it all meant to them." — CM Magazine "Lyn Cook's novel will bring this period of Canadian history alive for the reader and give new understanding of the plight of the Acadian refugees." — Winnipeg Free Press "An exciting and suspense-filled story." — Burnaby Now About the Author Veteran children's writer Lyn Cook has authored many titles for children, and is perhaps best known for her classic novel, The Bells on Finland Street. But she has had a varied care