All Gone Widdun

Book excerpt: All Gone Widdun is a work of fiction. Most of the major events in the novel are based on accounts in James P. Howley's classic, The Beothucks or Red Indians: the aboriginal inhabitants of Newfoundland (1915, Cambridge University Press), and Ingborg Marshall's A History and Ethnography of the Beothuk (1996, McGill Queen's University Press). Nearly all the named characters-with a few notable expressions-were real people. Their personalities have been fictionalized. How they felt about themselves, each other and what happened is a matter of conjecture. Copies of Shanawdithit's drawings are placed at appropriate points in the narrative. Her original drawings can be found in the Newfoundland museum, St. John's. *Widdun: Beothuk word for sleep, euphemism for death. Annamarie Beckel lives in Northe Wisconsin. She works as editor/writer for the Abinoojiiyag (Youth) Center on the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe Indian Reservation. Beckel has published scientific articles and a non-fiction book, Breaking New Waters. She became fascinated with this story on her first visit to Newfoundland in 1976. This is her first novel.