Less Crazy Than You’d Think

To anyone who accepts the canard that Canadian history is dull, the subject of Keith Henderson’s third novel—the role of the Fenian raids of the mid 1860s in cementing the cause of Confederation—may seem unpromising. So let’s begin with one of the pithiest summaries of the matter in The Roof Walkers:

If everybody and his Aunt Sally are scared to death of Fenians, McGee and Macdonald will be pissing their pants with pleasure. Our bosses in Ottawa see everybody and his Aunt Sally in this way: The scareder they are, the more Canadian they’ll become. Get it? There never was a country born without a good dose of fear.

The history of the Fenian Brotherhood and its less-crazy-than-you’d-think plan to upset the applecart of British rule in Ireland by invading Canada is intricate, to say...