By Randall Probert
Author Randall Probert, perhaps the most popular contemporary writer of historic novels portraying life in the Maine wilderness, is announcing the recent release of his newest book: “A Trapper’s Legacy” – a sequel to “Train to Barnjum”.
Sterling and Wynola Silvanus and their two new children continue their life on their family farm on the back river road to Phillips from Strong. Sterling is busy farming and cutting lumber, while Wynola is busy with house work and raising two children. Then one day while at the county fair in Farmington, Sterling and Wynola are attacked by Hartley Griswald and Saul Montague, the same two roughnecks that had attacked Sterling from behind 24 years earlier. They both end up in the hospital and then back to prison. Petite and beautiful Wynola had beaten the living hell out of Saul, a beating that he would never forget.
The Carcajou legend that Mr. Probert had created in his novel “Courier de Bois” and used to tell the history of the Grafton area in “A Grafton Tale” and then again in “Train to Barnjum”, Wynola now passes on to their son Pierpole. She tells her son that the vest will always protect him and with this protection comes great knowledge and responsibility. Pierpole enlists in the army and leads his team while on survival training in Alaska and becomes the team leader of the Grizzly Scouts in South Korea.
Pierpole spends a cold winter alone, north of Paramachnee Lake where Falling Bear had built his village. The small band of Abenaki People have by now all moved on to St. Francis, Quebec. While at the old village, he saves the life of a lost fisherman who he reprimands for trespassing and then later has to stand before him in court to answer charges brought against him by the new game warden. During the coldest days of that winter, Pierpole is visited by a beautiful woman who helps him to overcome the stresses of war.
This woman visits him several times and Pierpole is not sure if it was in his dreams or if she is real. But this woman guides him back to the museum at Val d’Or, Quebec, where he meets the curator, Marian who takes him to Emile LaMontagne’s cabin where the Carcajou legend was created.
There the legend has now come full circle and Pierpole discovers the real secret of the wolverine vest and the legend.
