
- Publisher: Signature Editions
- Available in: paperback, eBook
- ISBN: 9781897109601
- Published: September 1, 2012
*Winner of the 2012 DeBeers NorthWords Prize for Best Book
Body Trade weaves together two stories of survival. The main narrative follows Rosie and Tanya, two young Canadian women who decide to leave the Northwest Territories and head south on an ill-conceived road trip through California, Mexico and Central America. The story takes a life-defining twist when their search for freedom and adventure brings them into contact with predators of the Central American sex trafficking trade. The girls’ journey into unknown and dangerous territory is punctuated with scenes from a plane crash in the far North, underlining the novel’s themes of survival, betrayal, epiphany and hope. In a deeply personal narrative that explores power, sexual manipulation, cultural consumption and trust, Body Trade asks the ultimate question: To what terrifying places will we journey, and at what cost, in order to save our own lives?
Reviews
Macpherson’s story is ambitious, and tackles many issues: racism, class struggles, female friendship and white-aboriginal realities. Some of these efforts work, others don’t. The clash of the white and aboriginal points of view is sharply defined, and Macpherson effectively uses the metaphor of the landscape to describe these differences. For the whites, “the school year in Yellowknife is like the Mackenzie, one huge muddy brown river of kids that flows fast and furious in and out to school, needing to be fed morning, noon and night.” As the women drive south, Rosie marks down in her notebook the names of all the rivers they cross. The rivers came first, then the towns, she explains to Tanya. Rosie’s trusting, sweet nature and her total lack of cynicism are no defence against the threats of the world. But through her, the reader learns a lot of the Indian way of life. Tanya, though more experienced, makes serious errors in judgment. The combination does not add up to a happy ending. A hellhole in the jungles of Belize is the ultimate destination for these two women, and like the pilot Hartwell, they have to find a way to stay alive. Body Trade is an unusual story that offers a unique look at the Canadian North and the people who live in it, escape from it or survive its harsh realities.”
“Two young women decide to blow their small, northern Canadian town and head south: the United States, Mexico and finally, Belize. The year is 1972. A carefree adventure becomes deadly serious for Tanya (experienced, pragmatic, overly confident) and Rosie (younger, naive, overly sensitive) in Margaret Macpherson’s new novel, Body Trade (Signature Editions). Impossible decisions must be made. “I’ve always had the title in my head,” Macpherson says. “I wanted to talk about the flesh trade. The idea of physical, human flesh. “Tanya’s a body girl,” she adds. “Tanya needs to be in charge, in control. She was a fun character to write. I loved her energy, her fuck-you attitude. “But I like Rosie, too. She’s so pure. Sex is a very tender thing to her.” As the two head further south, the novel becomes increasingly dark. “I like to call it Thelma and Louise meets Apocalypse Now,” Macpherson says. “They are in the Heart of Darkness. “It was a tough book to write, but I had to write it.””
For her, a companion and a car are the equivalent of a magic carpet. It’s 1972 and feminist energy is new, full of confidence and promise. The two girls, an unpredictable, mixed-race Canadian variation of Thelma and Louise, set off on a journey that will descend into a hell on earth beyond their combined ability to imagine.
The hostility of extreme cold slowly gives way to the suffocation of extreme heat, and the cultural exploitation of the northern forces to those of the South. There is little to smile at in Body Trade. Macpherson goes back and forth between this fictional journey and another borrowed from actual history. In November 1972, a Beechcraft carrying native medical patients and piloted by bush pilot Martin Hartwell crash landed. The only survivors, two men, one white and one native, were also forced to make choices that dictated whether they would live or die. In both the fictional and historical narratives, there will be only one survivor who will pay an unspeakable price for a second chance at life. Body Trade keeps a tightening grip on its readers, racing to a final few chapters in which the heart pounds inevitably faster. The ending is an unexpected shock to the spirit. The recent book marketing campaign that claimed that the world needs more Canada still lingers. To that should be added that Canada needs more Margaret Macpherson and writers like her, who offer sophisticated, substantive and poetic novels sure to keep an appetite for fiction alive and very well indeed.”
“I haven’t read a lot of road trip books (only Volkswagen Blues and On The Road come immediately to mind), but I love the idea of them. Body Trade has additional appeal to me as the road trip sets out from Yellowknife. It eventually winds up in Belize, but through flashbacks and a side story based on a real news event of the early 70s, the north maintains a strong presence.”