Whether Sundstol has Hansen explaining the legend surrounding Baraga's Cross, a cross erected in the woods near the lake, the history of the fur trade and its portage problems, or the disappearance of an Indian medicine man, both the author and his character seem obsessed with the past and its effects on the present. While this is the kind of narrative interpolation that slows the pace of the novel, here it is fundamental as a kind of cultural remembrance of things past.

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