This is story of a family of French Canadian Herve Herve whose children are either born giants or runts. Many of the runts do not thrive or are given away. This is not a gentle book. The book is divided into Book One - the tale of the generations of the giants, and Book Two, the runts. In Book One Jude, one of Herve's sons, is taught to fight. His father places bets on how much pain he can withstand. At home Jude tries to protect his frail sister. At a certain point Jude flees the family home and heads south, following many French Canadians to the USA in search of jobs and luxuries. There his saga continues.

I really enjoyed Book One. Bechard writes beautifully and there is an element of mysticism that I enjoyed. Book Two follows the runts - I think. I say I think because I found Book two very disjointed and hard to follow. I would be reading a passage and then it would end, I would reread the last few phrases, still be confused, move on and the same thing would happen over and over again. Aside from that I just did not like the characters in Book Two and did not always find their connections clear. At the very end the two branches of the family sort of come together, but personally I would have been happy to have stayed with the characters in Book One for a longer period of time and never have bothered with the runts! Five stars for Book One, zero stars for Book Two! ( )