A Wedding on the Banks (37 page)

The French surnames in this novel were chosen with great respect and are the surnames of the following ancestral grandparents:

Zacharie Cloutier (born circa 1590, Perche, France, son of Denis Cloutier and Renée Brière) married Xainte Du Pont (born 1596) on July 13, 1616. A seigneur and master carpenter in New France, he arrived there in 1634 with Dr. Robert Giffard. Giffard (Gifford) is also a surname in this book, as well as in
The
Funeral
Makers.

Julien Fortin (baptized February 9, 1621, son of Julien Fortin, grandson of Simon Fortin), who left Normandy at the age of twenty-nine to battle headwinds for three long months at sea before arriving at Quebec in late summer 1650. He married Genevieve Gamache on November 11, 1652. Cape Tourmente, “the Fortin Coast,” where I go to watch snow geese gather by the thousands, is named for him.

Paul Vachon (born in France in 1630, son of Vincent Vachon and Sapience Vateau), Seigniorial Notary, came to New France in 1650. He married Marguerite Langlois on October 22, 1653. Paul Vachon helped to build the chapel of the Hôtel-Dieu de Québec in Quebec City, as well as some of the sick wards. He and many of his children died in a terrible epidemic of 1703.

My apologies to them and to the French-speaking residents of the St. John Valley in northern Maine, where a skunk is called “bête puant.” I chose “putois” from Cassell's French Dictionary for poetic reasons. I also apologize to any offended skunks.

Author photo by Leslie Bowman

Cathie Pelletier was born and raised on the banks of the St. John River, at the end of the road in northern Maine. She is the author of eleven other novels, including
The
Funeral
Makers
(
New York Times Book Review
Notable Book),
The
Weight
of
Winter
(winner of the New England Book Award), and
Running
the
Bulls
(winner of the Paterson Prize for Fiction). As K. C. McKinnon, she has written two novels, both of which became television films. After years of living in Nashville, Tennessee; Toronto, Canada; and Eastman, Quebec, she has returned to Allagash, Maine, and the family homestead where she was born.