SOLOMAN GURSKY WAS HERE By Mordecai Richler Knopf, $19.95 Fiction
One morning — during the record cold spell of 1851 — a big menacing black bird, the likes of which had never been seen before, soared over the crude mill town of Magog, hard by the Vermont border, swooping low again and again. Luther Hollis brought down the bird with his Springfield. Then the men saw a team of twelve yapping dogs emerging out of the wind and swirling snows of the frozen Lake Memphremagog. The dogs were pulling a long, heavily laden sled at the stern of which stood Ephraim Gursky, a small fierce hooded man cracking a whip. Ephraim pulled close to the shore and began to trudge up and down, searching the skies, an inhuman call, some sort of sad clacking noise, at once abandoned yet charged with hope, coming from the back of his throat.
