Twenty-One Cardinals

By Jocelyne Saucier

From the author and translator of And the Birds Rained Down, a 2015 CBC Canada Reads selection

Winner of the 2015 Governor General's Literary Award for French-to-English Translation

An abandoned mine. A large family driven by honour. And a source of pain, buried deep in the ground.

We’re nothing like other families. We are self-made. We are an essence unto ourselves, unique and dissonant, the only members of our species. Livers of humdrum lives who flitted around us got their wings burned. We’re not mean, but we can bare our teeth. People didn’t hang around when a band of Cardinals made its presence known.

With twenty-one kids, the Cardinal family is a force of nature. And now, after not being in the same room for decades, they’re congregating to celebrate their father, a prospector who discovered the zinc mine their now-deserted hometown in northern Quebec was built around. But as the siblings tell the tales of their feral childhood, we discover that Angèle, the only Cardinal with a penchant for happiness, has gone missing – although everyone has pretended not to notice for years. Why the silence? What secrets does the mine hold?

'Rhonda Mullins’ translation of Twenty-One Cardinals expertly embodies the multiple voices in Jocelyne Saucier’s complex novel. More than inhabiting the world of one writer, Mullins single-handedly performs the roles of an entire cast of characters. As a translator, her virtuosic deftness is in the restrained power of her writing.'

– GG jury citation

Praise for the French edition of Twenty-One Cardinals:

‘With its explosive, poignant, funny and tragicstory and memorable characters, Les héritiers de la mine is an important novel … Through the destiny of this large family, the author talks about Abitibi, where she lives, and of its broken dreams and cheated workers, the blind power of multinationals, the disappearance of villages and families decimated. Her protagonists have the makings of heroes, the stuff to withstand adversity; they may be local heroes, but their fight is universal.’

– Voir (translated from the French)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Coach House Books
• Release date: Jun 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781770564060

Jocelyne Saucier

Jocelyne Saucier was born in New Brunswick and lives in Abitibi, Québec. Two of her previous novels, La vie comme une image (House of Sighs) and Jeanne sur les routes (Jeanne’s Road) were finalists for the Governor General’s Award. Il pleuvait des oiseaux (And the Birds Rained Down) garnered her the Prix des Cinq continents de la Francophonie, making her the first Canadian to win the award. The book was a CBC Canada Reads Selection in 2015.

Book preview

Reviews for Twenty-One Cardinals

[lostinalibrary · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The twenty-one Cardinals grew up in the mining town of Norcoville, Quebec where they were like an unbridled law unto themselves:We were the kings. The real deal. We wanted so much for ourselves and from life that everything around us seemed pathetic The original mine had been discovered by their father who had almost a sixth sense for discovering valuable deposits but no business sense in exploiting them. The kids, who are all known by nicknames (eg. Geronimo, Old Maid, Mustang, and Caboose), spent much of their childhoods finding often destructive ways to protect what they saw as their father’s rightful property. Eventually the mine shuts down and the Cardinals are scattered to the ends of the earth. Now, thirty years later, they are reuniting, with one important exception, at a mining conference at which their father is to be honoured. But they have a secret that will surely be outed now that they are together. The narrative shifts between several of the children as we learn their and their siblings’ stories, their role in the secret, and how it has impacted their lives ever since. Twenty-One Cardinals is by French Canadian author Jocelyne Saucier and translated from the French by Rhonda Mullins. This is a beautifully written and compelling tale of a family, once completely self-contained, torn apart by a dark secret, trying to learn to forgive. It combines a coming-of-age tale and a fascinating mystery infused with humour and social commentary with a huge cast of characters who, despite the number, are fully realized individuals who easily grab the sympathy of the reader. It is an original, poignant, and, often, dark tale of family loyalties, secrets, and tragedy, what can break them and what can pull them together again. As the one nicknamed Foster Child points out Family is an encounter with the deepest parts of our soulA book to be read slowly, to be savoured, and to be returned to often.

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the story of a large family: mom and dad and 21 kids. They live in a small mining town in Quebec. The family is a tribe unto itself, with seemingly little supervision by the parents, although the parents are there for the children in often surprising and deeply loving ways. At the heart of the story is a family secret.Some of the kids narrate different chapters, and this brings a depth of perspective to the family history and the secret at its heart. And the book got better as it went along because as I came to know the characters, I came to care for them. They moved from being this strange cast of 21 kids to individuals dealing with their past and forging their futures. They ending took my breath away. There's a lot here about family and loyalty.