The Tent Peg

By Aritha van Herk

Book Overview

In "The Tent Peg," award-winning novelist Aritha van Herk uses her unerring perception and impressive literary skill to capture the mystical mood of the Arctic and the people who are drawn to it. In this intriguing story, a young woman who disguises herself as a man to work in a uranium prospecting camp deep in the Yukon mountains. J.L. is on the run from an empty heart and is desperate for solitude. Yet solitude eludes her from the moment she hangs up her pots and pans in the cook tent, and the men in the camp begin to drift toward her, drawn by her silence. These men are drifters, romantics and outcasts - men who have come to the North in search of answers for questions they can't define.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0872237516
• ISBN13: 9780872237513
• Release Date: January 1982
• Publisher: Seaview Books
• Length: 227 Pages
• Weight: 0.98 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A BEAUTIFUL NOVEL

This spare novel of a young woman who infiltrates an all-male geologists' camp in northern Canada uses the technique of rotating narrators pioneered by Faulkner in As I Lay Dying to achieve a wonderfully multi-dimensional evocation of the main character. Though certain of the peripheral characters, notably Jerome and Milton, never break free of caricature, the novel is made profound, and rereadable, by the strength, honesty and uniqueness of J.L. I completely fell in love with her. You will too.

Absolutely Nails the Bush Camp Atmosphere

The book is about a camp cook in a Geology camp in the Northwest Territories of Canada.I worked in the Bush in Canada for eleven years and everyone I know who has lived in those camps finds this book extremely evocative of the camp experience. I read this book cover to cover in one sitting. I don't think you need to have lived that life to enjoy the story, however. It's an excellent piece of writing.