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Book Cover for: Twenty-One Cardinals, Jocelyne Saucier

Twenty-One Cardinals

Jocelyne Saucier

Reader Score

76%

76% of readers

recommend this book

Winner:Governor General's Literary Awards -Translation (2015)
We're nothing like other families. We are self-made. We are an essence unto ourselves, unique and dissonant, the only members of our species. Livers of humdrum lives who flitted around us got their wings burned. We're not mean, but we can bare our teeth. People didn't hang around when a band of Cardinals made its presence known.

With twenty-one kids, the Cardinal family is a force of nature. And now, after not being in the same room for decades, they're congregating to celebrate their father, a prospector who discovered the zinc mine their now-deserted hometown in northern Quebec was built around. But as the siblings tell the tales of their feral childhood, we discover that Angèle, the only Cardinal with a penchant for happiness, has gone missing - although everyone has pretended not to notice for years. Why the silence? What secrets does the mine hold?

Book Details

  • Publisher: Coach House Books
  • Publish Date: Jun 9th, 2015
  • Pages: 176
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.00in - 5.00in - 0.60in - 0.50lb
  • EAN: 9781552453070
  • Categories: LiteraryFamily Life - GeneralPsychological

About the Author

Jocelyne Saucier was born in New Brunswick and lives in Abitibi, Québec. Two of her previous novels, La vie comme une image (House of Sighs) and Jeanne sur les routes (Jeanne's Road) were finalists for the Governor General's Award. Il pleuvait des oiseaux (And the Birds Rained Down) garnered her the Prix des Cinq continents de la Francophonie, making her the first Canadian to win the award. The book was a CBC Canada Reads Selection in 2015.


Rhonda Mullins is a writer and translator living in Montréal. And the Birds Rained Down, her translation of Jocelyne Saucier's Il pleuvait des oiseaux, was a CBC Canada Reads Selection. It was also shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award, as were her translations of Élise Turcotte's Guyana and Hervé Fischer's The Decline of the Hollywood Empire.

More books by Jocelyne Saucier

Book Cover for: And the Birds Rained Down, Jocelyne Saucier
Book Cover for: And Miles to Go Before I Sleep, Jocelyne Saucier

Praise for this book


Praise for the French edition of Twenty--One Cardinals:

'With its explosive, poignant, funny and tragic story and memorable characters, Les héritiers de la mine is an important novel ... Through the destiny of this large family, the author talks about Abitibi, where she lives, and of its broken dreams and cheated workers, the blind power of multinationals, the disappearance of villages and families decimated. Her protagonists have the makings of heroes, the stuff to withstand adversity; they may be local heroes, but their fight is universal.' -- Voir (translated from the French)


Praise for the French edition of Twenty--One Cardinals:

'With its explosive, poignant, funny and tragic story and memorable characters, Les héritiers de la mine is an important novel ... Through the destiny of this large family, the author talks about Abitibi, where she lives, and of its broken dreams and cheated workers, the blind power of multinationals, the disappearance of villages and families decimated. Her protagonists have the makings of heroes, the stuff to withstand adversity; they may be local heroes, but their fight is universal.' -- Voir (translated from the French)