Jake Doherty's second novel, Bearwalker Alibi, is now on the proverbial shelves. The Hub is pleased to serialize Jake's short story "Death in Safe Harbor", set just up the Bruce Peninsula. The first installment is available starting today in our Arts - Fiction section.
Jake Doherty's latest novel, "Bearwalker Alibi", carves out the reconciliation road between Manitoulin Island's white and aboriginal communities.
The retired newspaper publisher and editor has rare skills right for this time. He's almost 80 and presciently draws on deep research and his professional career that looked behind the headlines, often before they were written.
"To be clear, I didn't begin writing this book with the reconciliation in mind," he said, " but I had been intrigued by news reports that a young Ojibwa had relied on an old tribal myth as defense in a murder trial on Manitoulin. He said he believed the victim had placed a curse on him.
"Could a white judge accept that? That question became the driving force in Bearwalker. Could an old tribal myth have standing in a Canadian court, arguably testing the limits of the current reconciliation debate?"
The novel, his second, has received solid praise:
From Ottawa, Barbara Fradkin, a retired clinical psychologist, said:
"Powerful and intelligent." She is a two-winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for best Canadian mystery novel of the year.
From Manitoulin, Bonnie Kogos wrote in The Sudbury Star:
"Murder.Conflict? You bet! Love ? Yes! I couldn't put down Jake Doherty's amazing novel, Bearwalker Alibi. Jake draws a gutsy road of reconciliation between Manitoulin's aboriginal and white communities."
From Owen Sound, Janet Glasspool said:
"What an interesting and powerful book! You researched so many different subjects, amazing in depth . . . kept getting stronger and stronger." She is a former director of the Bluewater School board and now a management consultant.
In the synopsis, Jake's book reveals that dead is a sleazy young German who came to Manitoulin to distribute Ecstasy to Great Lake cities. He fled Germany rather than testify in a gang trial in Dresden. Interpol wants him. He lives with his uncle who is building a pow wow hotel on the island for German wannabe Indians.
The only witness is Dr. Mary Fraser, Canada's ranking expert on native symbols and an Ojibwa herself. She bloodied her hands when she failed to stop the murder.
Drawn back to Manitoulin to recover her childhood identity, she ends up in a psychiatric hospital, unable to recall who's responsible. Her live-in-lover, Fergus Fitzgerald. who came to Canada during the Vietnam War, uses his reporter's instincts to flush out the real killer.
Mary also has the last word in the eventual trial in Gore Bay on the island where she is hounded by a very righteous, and very white, Crown Attorney. He thinks she is possessed by a devil herself. Instead, she is asked by the judge to explain herself: "I have been away too long to see evil spirits in dark woods. But they are part of the Ojibwa history. If I accept my people again and accept Manitoulin as my home, then there is part of me that accepts their fears. Yes, I believe that the bearwalker exists in the hearts and minds of my people."
Aside from Dresden and Manitoulin, Bearwalker touches down in Sudbury and North Bay. Jake's attention to the psychological roots of his main characters reflects 40 years in journalism as a reporter, editor and finally publisher of the Hamilton Spectator. After graduating from St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, N.S., he received a Masters Degree (Journalism) from Columbia University in New York. He's most comfortable with the redemptive challenges of older men which, he says, "provide the great range to explore the thin line between good and evil."
Bearwalker was published by Carrick Publishing of Toronto. The novel is available as both a print and e-book through Amazon. ca. or from
the author directly at jmdoherty@rogers.com. Bearwalker is also available on the Chi-Cheemaum Ferry that runs from Tobermory on the Bruce Peninsula to South Baymouth on Manitoulin.
