The Sun Of Quebec

The Sun Of Quebec is one of Joseph Alexander Altsheler’s books in his French and Indian War series, the connected sequence of historical adventure novels for boys that took young protagonists through the major events of the eighteenth century colonial conflict between France and Britain for control of the North American interior. Altsheler had built his reputation writing historical adventure novels for boys, particularly the Young Trailers series about the Kentucky frontier, and the French and Indian War books extended that approach to the slightly earlier colonial era.

The sun of Quebec of the title refers to the Battle of Quebec in September 1759, one of the most decisive engagements of the French and Indian War and the climactic moment of the British conquest of New France. The battle was fought on the Plains of Abraham just outside the walls of Quebec, with the British forces under James Wolfe defeating the French forces under Louis Joseph de Montcalm in an engagement that killed both commanders and effectively ended French rule in North America. Altsheler uses the historical material as the structural anchor for his fictional narrative about young protagonists caught up in the events.

The French and Indian War series gave Altsheler room to develop a connected cast across multiple novels, with the same young protagonists moving through the various major events of the war. The Sun Of Quebec brings the series toward one of its high points, with the climactic battle that decided the war providing the kind of dramatic material that the genre rewarded. Altsheler put a lot of effort into rendering the actual military history with reasonable accuracy for a young readers’ adventure novel, with attention to the specific terrain, the various factions involved, and the colonial military culture of the period.

Altsheler’s prose is brisk and his action sequences move at the pace his young readers expected. The moral lessons about courage, loyalty, and the costs of war are delivered through the narrative rather than imposed in lectures. Modern readers should be aware that the period assumptions about race, region, and the moral character of the various participants in the war, particularly the indigenous peoples whose lands were the actual subject of the colonial dispute, are very much present in Altsheler’s fiction in ways that have not aged well.

For scholars of early twentieth century American children’s literature, of how colonial American history was translated into adventure fiction for the young, or of the wider career of Joseph Alexander Altsheler, the French and Indian War series is essential. Many of his books are now in the public domain.