CBC Arts News: Spirit of '74: David Bergen explains the forces behind his gripping new novel, The Retreat

Posted on October 29, 2008, at 5:20 PM

David Bergen's novel The Retreat is set in northwestern Ontario in the summer of 1974, but it's hardly an exercise in nostalgia. The Winnipeg author places his new novel in a half-baked commune outside Kenora, where self-absorbed adults try to work out their issues while their unwatched children flounder. In the meantime, not far away, militant Ojibwa protesters are preparing to reclaim Anicinabe Park. Against that backdrop of white solipsism and aboriginal anger, Bergen paints a tragic interracial love story involving a teenage girl from the commune and an Ojibwa youth targeted by the local police. read more >