In Krista Foss’s debut novel, the former journalist, teacher, and a writer residing in Smoke River, Hamilton, presents the impacts of land struggles over a region of new residential partition between the non-natives and the Mohawks. There is a high likelihood that the excerpt of Salamanders was most likely enthused by the land dispute at the Grand River. From the tale, it is substantial to claim that the novel is complex, since it delves into series of tough life situations. It is also likely that this non-fictional epic story revolves around several families with interests lying on different sides of the blockade of the protesting natives. Some of the concerns that the writer wants her readers to think of are the actions they would take for their children and their homes. In this excerpt, the former journalist also uses some rhetorical questions for the readers to figure out the detailed meaning of justice, not just to the humankind but also to the nature.
The strength of the writer lies in her writing’s ability, her aptitude to capture the nuances of both the small-town politics and the band council as well as that of her characters. One of Foss’s strongest themes is the conflict amid the parental expectations and hopes, and the reality of the characters of their children. She expresses the parents’ confidences by stating, “You can imagine these girls turning rocks over in that strip mall of trees on the escarpment’s slope” (p. 99). The author realizes this entirely in the dynamics of the families presented in this story.
The author has opted for a difficult path by creating a fiction of real events, which are quite close to their actual existence. She dares a strong reaction from the people who took part in the real confrontation since both tensions and memories are fresh. Foss’s plot is congruent with the real major events of the Caledonian standoff; even so, she integrates the dramatic aspects, such as rape. From the tale, the readers can draw the kind of compassion that the author writes with for a good number of her characters and this gives the readers a prelude of the attitudes, if not the motivations of these characters.
Even if Foss’s Salamanders was not a gripping reserve relations or an exploration of a town, it would be still glorious to peruse just to get a glimpse of the author’s imagery that conjures up the hot and humid summer at Ontario, which apparently shimmers off the page. She states, “All that summer, you drank coffee and wine under your homemade pergola, strung with a haphazard weave of lights and ivy, on the back deck of your home” (p. 102). The kind of connection, which the characters share to the land, is ostensibly another important theme, which permeates the novel. It is imperative to add to the account that the novel is written from several distinct points of view, which makes it relatively trickier to stick to the plot and mark the real characters. At the same time, the writer presents a very objective arrangement of events.
Concisely, Salamanders is a closely woven, expressive exploration of some uncomfortable truths that both the native and the non-Aboriginals encounter in their daily lives. Given Foss’s impressive skills of writing, whatever the author creates next will be worth waiting to her esteemed readers.
