3 out of 4 stars
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Based on factual historical events, Kevin Annett’s At the Mouth of a Cannon follows the life of Pastor Kevin on the West Coast of Canada. Told as a first-person narrative, this is a story that talks about the Ahousaht tribe of Indians in Port Alberni. It has seven chapters.
Kevin Annett was a pastor stationed in Port Alberni at St. Andrews Church in 1992. When Kevin got to Port Alberni, he noticed that only the Whites attended the church he was posted to. Out of curiosity, he did a bit of investigation that brought to light the secret that was hidden by the “three-headed monster”: the Church, the Government, and the big business companies. For many years, they covered up a series of events that ended the lives of thousands of Ahousahts: injudicious killings, human sterilization, the spread of smallpox, and genocide. Kevin's discovery of this secret led to his dismissal.
Some Ahousahts helped him in his quest to uncover the truth behind the misdeeds of the Church and their cover-ups. Danny Gus and Earl George were his most supportive Ahousahts. Danny was a retired fisherman from the ancient Ahousaht tribe, and Earl was a descendant of Chief Billy August, the hereditary elder responsible for protecting the Ahousahts' lands.
This book is fast-paced and well-organized. The author’s organization of sentences is clear, sensible, cogent and well-thought-out. He has written this book to commiserate with the Indians in Port Alberni. He paints a vivid picture of the series of events that happened over those years. This story is quite easy to read and understand. He includes pictures in this book for those that may have doubts on the genuineness of his story. There are notes throughout for easy referencing, and the appendix shows the sequential order of events narrated.
Despite the good organization, this story is not free of errors. There were spacing errors throughout the book. Each chapter had at least a paragraph that was not well-spaced. This book has a lot of punctuation errors (unnecessary hyphenation and apostrophes). There were some misspelled words like “extinquishing” for “extinguishing” in chapter three and “due” for “do” in chapter seven.
At the Mouth of a Cannon will appeal to those who have an interest in the background stories of Indians and Canadians on the West Coast. Readers who love good historical non-fiction stories will like it, too. This book won't interest readers who don't appreciate history or non-fiction stories. In addition, this book won’t appeal to some Christians; the narration in chapter two may contradict their belief in God’s creation of Heaven and Earth.
Overall, I rate At the Mouth of a Cannon by Kevin Annett 3 out of 4 stars because it’s a good non-fiction work with so many details. I didn’t give it a perfect rating because it lacked professional editing. I didn't assign a lesser rating because the errors didn't disrupt the message of the story.
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At the Mouth of a Cannon
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