Unrest Gwen Tuinman Random House When Gwen Tuinman was researching her robust historical novel, Unrest, it seemed entirely natural that she should check out early 19th Century weaponry. “I was able to learn how to load a weapon with a ramrod and drop in a musket ball and fire it,” she says enthusiastically. Still, her stamina was tested when it came to keeping the firearm steady.
“The barrel was five feet long. I have good upper body strength, but after several minutes your arm just starts to go!” Tuinman writes with similar authority about slaughtering a hog (the famed Foxfire books were her source here), and chopping down a tree. She cites productive visits to Ontario’s Algonquin Way Cultural Centre — “I had such a wonderful time” — and the Loggers Day celebrations in Algonquin Park where the art of tree felling was on full display.
Such background material was essential to the gritty, grimy, shockingly violent culture of Ottawa when it was still known as Bytown. “I think we Canadians have an images of ourselves as strong and decent, with all the beliefs we hold dear about being Canadian,” she says with a laugh. Unrest challenges that illusion, so any reader preferring a romantic sanitized version of our national capital’s early history should look elsewhere.
Tuinman is also interested in how societies work — and in giving special attention here to the place of women in such an often unforgiving male-dominated culture, she comes through with sharpl.
