Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and the Destruction of Huronia

RBC Taylor Prize winner Bourrie (Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson) tells the dramatic story of Jean de Brébeuf, a French Jesuit priest who played an outsized role in the destruction of the Huron homeland in North America during the 1630s and 1640s. It takes the now-mythologized tale of Brébeuf and contextualizes it in the contemporaneous multidimensional crosscurrents of that violent era. Framed by the backstory of religious wars raging in Europe between Catholics and Protestants, it examines the behavior of the Jesuits and the ramifications to the Huron nation. Bourrie also examines the society, culture, religion, and tribal warfare of the Hurons. The Jesuits, an elite corps of sons of privilege dispatched to New France (Quebec) to save souls, insinuated themselves into Huron society when the Hurons were fighting with the much larger forces of the Iroquois, who ultimately conquered them. The Hurons, for their part, were more interested in French guns than French religion. Brébeuf’s death, whether prisoner of war punishment or desired martyrdom, continues to reverberate in North American and Catholic history.