In Canada we have a long tradition of realistic animal stories from such well-known writers as Sir Charles G.D. Roberts and Roderick Haig-Brown. Ahmek, the Ojibway word for beaver, follows in that tradition. Set in Algonquin Park in 1917, the story follows the fortunes of a young beaver as he is forced out of his family lodge by poachers, goes on his “wander year” to find his own territory, finds a mate, builds a dam and lodge, and starts a family. Woven into the natural cycle of the beaver’s life are encounters with humans, good and bad. Painter Tom Thomson and several members of the Group of Seven show how environmentally friendly humans behave in the wilderness while some poachers show how others exploit it.

Because this is a novel rather than non-fiction, Ahmek and his family and friends are developed as characters with distinct personalities. They follow the Ojibwa in attributing the ground-shaking rumble of a train to a Wendigo and asking Manitou for help in times of trouble. They also have cultural traditions: a visiting beaver must be asked three times to eat with them and must in turn demur the first two times. Such details give emotional depth to the story. Dramatic tension is maintained by the activities of poachers in what could have been the otherwise predictable cycle of the beavers’ natural life. The poachers appear at intervals through the novel to harass the beavers, who finally vanquish them by felling a tree much larger than they have ever felled before so that it crashes down almost onto the poachers’ tent.

The reader can empathize with the beavers through this well-constructed story. The writing style, however, is uneven, with the usual straightforward, pleasing tone of the narrative broken all too often by strained jarring imagery. For example, the falling tree traps the poachers in their tent “like sausages in vacuum-wrap in the supermarket, although, of course, vacuum-wrapped sausages would not be invented for another forty years.”

This story will appeal most to children under 10. Although its often-complicated sentence structure could pose silent-reading problems for some in this age group, it’s an excellent choice for parents and teachers to read aloud.