Sir Walter Scott employed the historical novel to analyze the process of history; Tolstoy used it to illustrate his own philosophy of history. Rudy Wiebe (and I should state here that I consider him thoroughly capable of sustaining these lofty comparisons) is more interested in using his art to explore the enigmas of history and to recreate the experience of living at a time of historical crisis. All his characters are authentic, and he occupies a territory closer than any of his novelist-predecessors to that of the professional historians. His creative faculty is to be found in the convincing motivations he provides for his protagonists and the artistic balance that he achieves in his selection of available incident….

[The Scorched-Wood People] is Wiebe's first novel to rely upon a single first-person perspective, and the strain sometimes shows. He asks his reader to accept an unusual authorial convention; an...