Obnoxious protagonist mars novel ‘Canoe Boy’ mirrors themes of Huck Finn

CANOE BOY, by Chip Chandler, America House Book Publishers, Frederick, MD.; 2000, 279 pages, $24.95.

Like the author, this book’s 14-year-old protagonist, Jonas Montgomery, lives in Maine. Which should give him something of an edge as a likeable young hero. So much for the Maine myth.

Because when we first meet Jonas, he’s in the bow of an aluminum canoe paddling down a wild Labrador river. He’s also telling his stern man to shape up, to stop giving him orders and to admit that Jonas knows more about white-water canoeing than anyone else, including the grown-up trip leader. As the river roars louder and louder, the canoe meets a large rock, flips and tosses Jonas and Bert (who whines a lot) into the river.

This, before we get to double-digit pages, so of course the boys are helped ashore, each blaming the other. Because the voice we hear throughout this book, written, I assume, for teen-agers, belongs to Jonas, many readers may find themselves wishing he’d shut up every now and then, if only to give them a breather.

Jonas is one of those teens who gets sent to this survival camp in Labrador because, in his father’s opinion, he could do with some shaping up, some character building, like a one-on-one run-in with a bear or maybe even a wolf. And as the book begins, most readers will agree that his father made the right decision. Jonas is a self-centered snot.

He’s so annoyed at his fellow survivor campers that he decides he’ll quit the entire scene, steals a canoe, tosses in his backpack, his sleeping bag, a tent and Malcolm Anderson’s book on how to survive in the wilderness and takes off solo, headed down river. Huckleberry Finn also left town on a raft headed down river, and it is Huck’s voice that speaks to us throughout his adventures, but Huck possesses a kind of instinctive humanity that gentles his words and thoughts. And, of course, Huck meets Jim, the runaway slave whose presence endows Huck’s adventures with a penetrating look at the lives of black and white in America when slavery was a fact of those lives.

Jonas meets Navarana, an 18-year-old Inuit girl, who, like Jim, is running away from her small, remote village at the edge of a Labrador bay. Like Huck and Jim, Jonas and Navarana are two runaways together. They have a great deal to say to each other; the words fly back and forth, and the relationship is fraught with difficulties. Hey, Jonas is not easy to like.

For one thing, he never knows enough to shut up. Partly, I think, because Jonas is getting on her nerves, Navarana decides to change her name (to Pipaluk) and to return to her village. Jonas tags along because (a) he is hungry and (b) his alternative is starvation.

Which is a good thing for the book because once we get to Pipaluk’s small village, we begin to learn a great deal about Inuit culture and life in the far north; just as Huck learned so much from Jim about what it meant to be a black slave in the South.

Mr. Chandler has spent considerable time in Inuit country and his insights into Inuit traditions and the minutiae of their daily lives at the edge of the Arctic give this book its reason for being. Like Jonas, most of us along the Maine coast have little concept of what it means to depend entirely on the wild, white world of the far north for the food that sustains life. Jonas, wimp that he is, can’t bring himself to shoot a caribou standing stock still in the sights of the rifle that has been handed him.

“Next time,” Pipaluk yells, “make sure you’re hungry. It makes a difference. You know, we can’t always go to the store to get food. And the caribou are only around for a short time each fall. We like to hunt, that’s true, but we also need the food. Truly need it. You talked about staying. You can’t unless you can get food for yourself and others. Understand?”

That settles that, thinks Jonas. “I’m not staying,” he yells at Pipaluk, further certifying his wimpiness. Before you know it, he’s on the last ferry of the year leaving for civilization and his parents in Maine, who may well wonder just how much he learned as a canoe boy up there at the edge of the far north. Well, he did learn a few hard lessons, and he’s the better for it. He tells us he may even return to the village someday. His parents will be pleased.