Saucier, Jocelyne: Twenty-One Cardinals

An abandoned mine. A large family driven by honour. And a source of pain, buried deep in the ground.

Jocelyne Saucier was born in New Brunswick and lives in Abitibi, Québec. Two of her previous novels, La vie comme une image (House of Sighs) and Jeanne sur les routes (Jeanne’s Road) were finalists for the Governor General’s Award. Il pleuvait des oiseaux (And the Birds Rained Down) garnered her the Prix des Cinq continents de la Francophonie, making her the first Canadian to win the award. The book was a CBC Canada Reads Selection in 2015.

Rhonda Mullins is a writer and translator living in Montréal. And the Birds Rained Down, her translation of Jocelyne Saucier’s Il pleuvait des oiseaux, was a CBC Canada Reads Selection. It was also shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award, as were her translations of Élise Turcotte’s Guyana and Hervé Fischer’s The Decline of the Hollywood Empire.