In 2013, Gabrielle Filteau-Chiba left her job, her home and her family in Montreal, and settled in a wooden cabin in the Kamouraska region of Quebec. She spent three years in the heart of the forest, without running water, electricity or network. His first novel,Encabanée(The Word and the Rest, 2021), was unanimously acclaimed both in Quebec and in France. “Waterfowl(Stock, 2022), his second novel is being adapted. With “Bivouac», she completes this triptych.
“Raphaëlle and Anouk spent the winter in their yurt in Gaspésie, out of time and out of the world. As spring approached, Raphaëlle convinced her partner to join the community of Ferme Orléane to explore the possibility of agriculture and of revolutionary living together… as well as the promise of enough canned goods to get through the cold seasons, warm in their den.
Quickly, community life weighs on Anouk and the first frictions between her and Raphaëlle are felt. The young woman decides to go and recharge her batteries in her cabin in Kamouraska, between the thousand-year-old pines and the murmur of the river. She soon runs into Riopelle-Robin, a fierce environmental activist, with whom she had an affair as brief as it was passionate. Alongside experienced “eco-warriors”, the latter is preparing a new mission: Operation Bivouac. Its objective: to prevent an oil pipeline project which must cross the lands of the Bas-Saint-Laurent and threatens to raze a public forest, a real jewel of biodiversity.
Anouk, soon joined by Raphaëlle and her allies from Ferme Océane, throws herself headlong into the defense of the territory. The fight promises to be fierce, because where some see a Nature to be protected, others see a resource to be exploited, regardless of the cost.” (Presentation of Stock editions)
“There weren’t enough flexible and multicolored words. The colors of this sleepless night awakened in me a palette of hope, much more than all the lovers in the world. Winter seemed to me to be milder, brighter, richer in learning every day.” Tired of an alienating daily life, Anouk left her Montreal apartment for an abandoned cabin in the Kamouraska region, where beluga whales are born. “Encabanée” in the middle of winter, she gradually learns the gestures to survive in the middle of nature. Life in autarky at -40°C is a constant adventure, a crazy gamble, an inner journey too. Anouk rediscovers herself. But her loneliness will soon be disturbed by an unexpected encounter…” (Presentation of Folio)
“Raphaëlle is a forest ranger. She lives alone with Coyote, her dog, in a trailer in the heart of the Kamouraska forest, in eastern Quebec. She meets bears, coyotes and lynx every day, but she would not trade her life for nothing in the world.
One morning, Raphaëlle is disturbed to discover bear tracks in front of the door of her cabin. A few days later, his dog disappeared. She finds her seriously injured by illegally placed snares. Mad with rage, she leaves a warning message for the poacher. When she finds human footprints in front of her house and a coyote skin on her bed, she understands that from being a hunter, she has become hunted. But Raphaëlle is not one to be intimidated. Helped by her old friend Lionel and the indomitable Anouk, a beautiful hermit in the woods, she patiently plots her revenge.
A breathless and captivating novel that plunges us into the splendor of the boreal forest, in the footsteps of two eco-warriors who will do anything to protect their world and those who inhabit it.” (Presentation of Folio)