Encounter by Brittany Luby (review)

On what's now known as the east Canadian coast, a young man, Fisher, awakes; on an explorer's ship in the north Atlantic, a young man, Sailor, greets the day. They're stunned to encounter each other ("Perhaps these lands are not so new," thinks Sailor), yet they negotiate past language differences to share food and enjoy a cooling swim together. They part friends, each hoping to see the other again. This northern first encounter story makes a complement to the better-known Caribbean accounts of European arrival, and the folkloric flavor of the storytelling is engaging. However, it's a startlingly idyllic approach to a first encounter story (a mood enhanced by Goade's starry, watercolor-dappled pastoral scenes). Luby, herself of Anishinaabe descent, states in her concluding note that she means to demonstrate that even kindly people like Sailor could be participants in oppressive systems, but that message is completely absent from the main text, and the implied audience is unlikely to bring the necessary knowledge for dramatic irony. As a result, the book struggles to find a valid use: it requires considerable adult external context to provide a corrective, and the arcadian impression of the story will either overbalance subsequent explanation or be belied by it. Nonetheless, this could be a way to discuss non-Columbian North American exploration while keeping the continent's existing residents at the forefront.