Sasquatch and the Green Sash

Sasquatch and the Green Sash is at once a translation and adaptation of the medieval English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, from a time when parts of English culture were closer to Old Norse roots. Novelist Keith Henderson has chosen to Canadianize the original and set it among the native Dene of the Northwest Territories' Nahanni National Park, a place with its own suggestive tradition of beheading stories. The rich alliterative language of the original has been retained and modernized. The setting has been edged further north, darker, colder, sub-arctic, with 'the ominous green and violet and pink of Aurora Borealis' and the additional dimension of the ancient Green Man's Muslim origins as Al Khidr, vizier of Alexander the Great. Together, in the lands where it's dark at mid-day, they once sought the Fountain of Youth. Here is much that is vivid, intriguing, and deeply morally satisfying: Sasquatches, beheadings, Turkish scimitars, caribou hunts, a young RCMP officer involved in illicit love affairs and mysterious ceintures flechees, all in the stunning panorama of Canada's Northwest where 'Magic ovals and circles decorate the northern land, interlink one with another; in secret hollows, nests, and caves, in birds' eggs and in the bellies of foxes, field mice, and bears, small heads grow and acquire their features, fleeting as a gust of wind.'