The Terror and Pity of Contact

It is a rare book that can alter forever the reader’s understanding of a single word, an ordinary word that until now has had one meaning only.

The word is “caress.” A soft, musical word, with loving connotations; how can it possibly be used without irony to describe acts of torture? But henceforth for this reader it is yoked to images of flayed skin and clamshell razors, the smell of fire and flesh, and the sound of men fearlessly singing their death songs—recurring, heartbreaking scenes from what is described as “mourning warfare” in Joseph Boyden’s magnificent third novel, The Orenda.

Three characters narrate The Orenda; their tales are interwoven, they often cover the same events, but they also push the story forward independently of one another. They are first-person, present-tense narratives by Bird, Snow Falls and Crow, all protagonists in the novel and emblematic of the triad of tragedy that is its foundation: the Huron...