Two Times a Traitor

Written by Karen Bass

Pajama Press

978-1-77278-031-4

240 pp.

Ages 9-12

May 2017 (Canada), August 2017 (US)

Selected as a Junior Library Guild Selection, Two Times a Traitor may seem a departure for award-winning author of historical fiction, Karen Bass, who won the Geoffrey Bilson Award for her books Graffiti Knight (Pajama Press, 2013) and Uncertain Soldier (Pajama Press, 2015) in consecutive years.  But, Karen Bass knows how to seamlessly weave a bit of the unexpected into her fiction, as she did in her suspenseful The Hill (Pajama Press, 2016), and as she does in Two Times a Traitor which blends a contemporary setting with Canada's past in Louisbourg 1745 through the use of time slip.

Twelve-year-old Lazare Berenger is still angry with his father who moved the family from Ottawa to Boston while Laz was visiting his Grandmère's farm in New Brunswick the previous summer.  And now, when he'd been saving up for a parkour camp for spring break, Laz is with his parents and younger sister Emeline visiting Halifax.  With every new suggestion of his father, Lazare is reeling with anger so, while visiting the Citadel, Laz takes off on his own.

The air seemed to push against Laz, as if it didn't want him to return down the tunnel.  Something strange was happening, but he didn't know if it was this chamber, the whole tunnel, or if he'd had too much bacon for lunch.  He took a deep breath and his lungs refused to fill. (pg. 19)

When he knocks himself out, he awakens in an unfamiliar landscape of pirate-looking men at bonfires on shore, old-time sailing ships moored in the bay and a man with a sword taking him to Captain Hawkins on the ship called the Constance.  Believing it's all a role play as boot camp punishment from his father, he spouts off about 2017 and more, leading the captain to believe he is pretending madness to distract them from recognizing him as an Acadian in league with the French at Louisbourg.  His clothes, which might conceal weapons, are taken away, as is his grandmother's St. Christopher medal ("Papist witchery"; pg. 38) and he is put in fetters.  Ben, a young boy who has been apprenticed to the Constance, befriends him and Laz learns that it truly is 1745 and they are transporting militia to Canso to fight King George's War against the French.

With a militiaman named Cooper seeking retribution on "Master Berenger" and Commander Pepperell, the commander of the expedition, ready to hang Laz for treason, the boy is put to work alongside the militia and then blackmailed–he is convinced his medal is the means to getting back to the future– into going into Louisbourg as a spy to seed doubt and do mischief.  Under the guise of a farm boy warning the French of an incoming barrage of British ships, Laz is welcomed into Louisbourg, becoming the messenger of Port Commander Pierre Morpain, a man who treats Laz as the boy wishes his own father would.  As Laz builds a new family amongst the residents of Louisbourg, he is haunted by his need to fulfill his obligation to the British if he is ever to return to his true family and life in 2017.

Privileged Laz may think his life with his father is impossible but, after facing treason charges twice, once by the British and later with the French after he sabotages their gun powder, he realizes how easy life has been.  Still he wonders about remaining in the past, one in which Morpain keeps him safe and shows him deep affection and respect and Laz has a purposeful life which, though dangerous and unpredictable, feels like home.

While taking the reader into both sides of the 1745 siege of Louisbourg, Karen Bass makes sure that Two Times a Traitor is about Laz recognizing what home is to him.  He may have been angry with the move to Boston but he soon realizes that what matters are the people.  It's evident he adores his sister and is determined to get home for her but he has some qualms when Louisbourg starts to feel like home too.  But before he can make the decision about where he belongs, he has to stay alive. With both sides believing him to be a traitor and an angry militiaman out to kill him, not to speak of the cannon balls, mortar and muskets and bayonets, safety is a commodity in short supply. Readers will adore the action adventure story of  Two Times a Traitor but its story of historical events is extraordinary and not to be relegated to second place. Karen Bass does comprehensive research, providing astounding detail to setting and characters, plunging readers into the fray that was war.  By allowing Laz to be part of both sides and emphasizing his confusion about which side to favour, Karen Bass allows readers to see the conflict from different perspectives and takes history away from the one-sidedness of most textbooks. Moreover, she allows us to see that conflict, whether personal or historical, always has two sides that need to be seen.  Resolution may be amicable or there may be victors and those defeated, but how it plays out is all about point of view.