Vandal Love

An astonishing novel of epic ambition, Vandal Love--winner of the prestigious Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for best first book in 2007--follows generations of a unique French-Canadian family across North America and through the twentieth century.

A family curse--a genetic trick resulting from centuries of hardship--causes the Herv#65533; children to be born either giants or runts. Book One follows the giants’ line, exploring Jude Herv#65533;’s career as a boxer in Georgia and Louisiana in the 1960s, his escape from that brutal life alone with his baby daughter Isa, and her eventual decision to enter into a strange, chaste marriage with a much older man. Book Two traces a different kind of life entirely, as the runts of the family discover that their power lies in a kind of unifying love. Fran#65533;ois seeks the identity of his missing father for years, while his own son, Harvey, flees from modern society into spiritual quests. But none of the Herv#65533;s can abandon their longing for a place where they might find others like themselves.

In assured and mystically powerful prose, Deni Y. B#65533;chard tells a wide-ranging, spellbinding story of a family trying to create an identity in an unwelcoming landscape. Imbued throughout with a deep sensitivity to the physical world, Vandal Love is a breathtaking literary debut about the power of love to create and destroy--in our lives, and in our history.