Leslie L spoke of three books she recently read but particularly wanted to highlight Five Wives by Joan Thomas, which won the Governor General Award a couple of years ago.
The events at the centre of this book took place in 1956 in Eastern Ecuador. A group of evangelical American missionaries was trying to make “friendly” contact with an isolated tribe of indigenous Ecuadorians living in the Amazonian basin.
Five young men with their wives and children arrive and settle in with different personalities and backgrounds and different attitudes towards their mission. It is a doomed attempt and the five husbands/fathers are killed. The wives and a sister of one of the men continue the mission with predictably unsettling results. The author has fictionalized much of the story and has added a modern twist. An excellent and compelling read! Joan Thomas is a Canadian author living in Winnipeg. published 2019.
