A Great and Noble Scheme by John Mack Faragher

With the real-life diaspora largely overlooked by most Americans, “A Great and Noble Scheme” offers an inspired take on the calamity perpetrated by one people on another in the name of God and country, with effects that continue to ripple through the modern society of both the United States and Canada.įaragher begins at the beginning, detailing how the French sent its first explorers to the region in 1604 - before the English established Jamestown, and before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock.

A Yale University professor who teaches and writes about the American frontier and is best known for a 1992 biography of Daniel Boone, Faragher offers up an ambitious, provocative work.įor some, it might beg the question: Do we really need another book recounting how the poor Acadians were booted out of Nova Scotia by the mean old British so long ago? With “A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland,” the answer has to be a resounding yes.įor most of our history, what little that most Americans knew about this tragic episode they learned from reading Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s “Evangeline.” Set against the backdrop of the Acadian exile, the epic poem, published in 1847, found appeal in its tale of the fictional, star-crossed lovers Evangeline and Gabriel, but it lacked an authenticity about how the Acadians came to be - and what led to their horrific uprooting from the life they had made for themselves in the homeland they called Acadie.

Now, along comes John Mack Faragher with a major new work intent on spicing up the prevailing thought on who the Acadians were, how they settled and thrived in what now are the Canadian Maritimes, why and how they were exiled from that homeland and what happened to them. Likewise, a high standard for insightful, readable works on the Acadians - those ill-fated ancestors of our Cajun people - has been maintained for many years by a short list of historians including Louisiana’s Carl Brasseaux and the Canadians Naomi E.S. Others are too hot, so strident they’re overwhelming - and hard to swallow.Īmid such confusion, there’s nothing like that sense of security that a bottle of Tabasco or Crystal hot sauce or a shaker of Tony Chachere’s seasoning brings to the table. Some are lackluster, adding nothing to what’s already on the plate. You can go almost anywhere in Louisiana and find beaucoup varieties on the shelves, but most of them just aren’t very good. For devotees of Cajun culture, books on the tragic and controversial Acadian deportation are like hot sauce.

A Great and Noble Scheme by John Mack Faragher