Reviews of The Cacouna Caves & the Hidden Mural (Book 1 in the Cacouna Saga)
The Cacouna Caves and the Hidden Mural is worthy of several readings. Why would I feel this? It is welcoming, inspiring, and revealing; like a conversation with a wise person, one is left enriched. It is about another reality, one that we are not familiar with in our world today. We enter it slowly, meeting a cast of characters in a slow measured pace. The experience is as though entering a temple as we bend our heads and slightly bow our bodies as we go beneath the low hanging door passage. And in that process our minds are somehow prepared to enter a newness. In this reality people can move between times, go back and forward in time. We do not look AT paintings on a wall in a museum, but into paintings, and as we do, we enter life, we engage deeply in a new reality. Humans are enlightened beings, but they are normal people, nothing about them would immediately draw the attention of any casual observer. But. - well, for example there's Sarah. Sarah should really not believe Deanna's irrational interpretation of events, yet, in a scene of increasing suspense she suddenly stands up, paces, sits back down, and then does she give her friend some "friendly advice" (to not believe in nonsense)? No! She enters the temple of Deanna's mind. She believes her. There is henceforth an adventure to reunite people separated. The pace quickens but is always measured, the characters are authentic. Do humans have the capacity to question themselves? Can we admit that we may not have all the answers, that we may have taken a wrong turn? The love in this world of uncertainties is shown through the characters' struggles - with what life has dealt them. There is no shirking, just an authentic living of one's life. The Cacouna Caves also delves into the history of the land which is now Canada, our First Nations ancestors, the arrival of Europeans, the oppressive attitudes of some of these newcomers. Culprits who oppress innocence can lurk within "sacred" sanctums, both within the interpretation of Christianity they brought, and the comfortable cultural understandings we may hold of "the way things are". But we are not bound, we are not held captive, the mind is free to fly towards truth. This is truly a mighty book. -- critic on Amazon.ca
Merci de nous partager ces images de chez nous semblant provenir d'un monde parallèle duquel tu as créé 2 magnifiques récits alliant histoire, fiction, aventure, fantaisie... Des heures de plaisir!
Thanks so much for sharing these images from our area: they appear as if coming from a parallel universe where you created two appealing novels. A judicious mix of history, fiction, adventure and fantasy...
Hours of great pleasure!... And, in so doing, you put some magic in our familiar environment—a new eye to look at things, a new window in our mind, thanks!
—Resident of Cacouna Village, Quebec
I just finished reading The Cacouna Caves and the Hidden Mural by Barbara Burgess, set in my beautiful hometown (Cacouna, a suburb of RDL). I was pleasantly surprised with this light-hearted novel... I’m not big on “fantasy” but this time travel novel is a quick read and it was lovely revisiting a part of the world I used to call home. I could literally picture many shenanigans growing up with my best friend Mimi. It beautifully honors our neck of the woods’ English, French and Native-American heritage. -- resident of Cacouna, Quebec
I really enjoyed this book. The author described the Saint Lawrence area so beautifully, I felt compelled to visit. The book is written with a rich texture, and is a nice melding of discovery, fantasy, history and spiritual awareness. .She builds the story very well. Towards the end I was definitely page-turning, couldn't put it down! The images and characters are still with me. It is a positive story, and leaves the reader with a wonderful impression, something I appreciate in literature. -- critic on Amazon.ca
This is truly a wonderful book, in every sense of the word since it is full of wonders. Multi-layered wonders combining magic and mysticism, spirituality and religion, miracles and love and reincarnation, the beauty of nature and the clash of civilizations between the native peoples in the form of the Mi’gmaq of Eastern Quebec and the first French and English settlers.
But above all it is an altogether original tale of time travel spanning almost three and a half centuries, from the late 1600s to the present day. A time travel that begins when a young man named Matthew quite literally disappears into a painting in the Montreal Museum of Art to find himself reincarnated as another, 17th century, Matthew living among the Mi’gmaq on the ... shore of the St. Lawrence adjacent to the mysterious and often treacherous “Cacouna Caves.”
The author has woven all these elements and layers – not to mention a cast of characters from the present and the past – into a magic carpet that wafts us effortlessly to and fro across the years. And all suffused with the heart-breakng loveliness of the Eastern Quebec landscape and the true miracle of the kaleidoscopic colors of the Northern Lights.
Are you ready for the author's time machine to take you from the here and now to the there and then? Your adventure starts the minute you open this book. The Cacouna Caves await you.
-- literary critic
Listen to the author being interviewed live in studio on CBC in Quebec City in 2017.
Barbara Burgess speaks about The Cacouna Caves and the Hidden Mural: Book One in the Cacouna Saga.
Click here for part 1 of the interview
Click here for part 2 of the interview