The Tinsmith

Tim Bowling is a favourite Canadian author whose father was a Frazer
River salmon fisherman in Ladner, BC. Lacking an aptitude for his
father's dying profession he moved to Edmonton, Alberta a province
without a coastline. Naturally he writes often about fishing but this
time round he has chosen the Battle of Antietam during the American
Civil War as the setting for his novel about an army surgeon.

Equally at home in poetry or prose I have yet to read a book of his I
didn't like. Although the subject of this book is rather grisly it is no
exception. One is engaged from the first pages feeling the exhaustion of
the surgeon at his desperate business days on end without rest. Part II
returns us to Bowling's home turf on the Fraser.

The doctor's life is intertwined with that of a white slave he met
during the war. The progeny of inter-racial couplings are often white in
colour but to racists the taint of their African heritage is obvious.
The book is not a polemic against slavery but the author's sentiments
are obvious. To the salmon fishermen of the Fraser any competition is
frowned upon, the hint that that competitor may be black condemns him.