Silver Chief to the Rescue by Jack O’Brien
When I was in grade school, I was enamored with wilderness adventure stories, particularly ones set in the far north. While I read plenty of Jack London (e.g., The Call of the Wild), my favorites were Jack O’Brien’s Silver Chief stories, which chronicled the adventures of a Canadian Mountie and the titular wolf-dog (with some definite similarities to London’s stories). Reading Silver Chief to the Rescue now, I see why I loved it as a boy; O’Brien’s novel is filled with highly romanticized descriptions of life in the snowy Canadian wilderness that nevertheless ring with authenticity. (O’Brien was a surveyor on Admiral Byrd’s 1928 Antarctic expedition.) What I didn’t see as a kid, however, is the novel’s unvarnished racism. Native and Indigenous characters are often depicted in unflattering ways: as shifty, cruel, uncultured, and above all else, in desperate need of the White Man’s law. (And lest there be any doubt about that, the Mountie says as much in an extended speech.) At best, they’re useful and eager to serve the book’s protagonist. Even if you try and explain the book’s racism as a product of its time, it’s still pretty obvious and ridiculous.