Pélagie: The Return to Acadie is the funny, lyrical tale of how a valiant widow leads her people out of exile. In 1755, British soldiers had forced them off their land and sent them as far from Acadie as possible. Twenty years later, the scattered Cormiers and LeBlancs, Landrys and Poiriers, Maillets and Légers find their way to Pélagie's ox-cart caravan and head for home. As well as the remains of her own family, Pélagie embraces a runaway slave, a gruff midwife, a giant, a fool, and a hundred-year-old patriarch who strikes a daring bargain with Death.

Through fair weather and foul, over mountains and rivers, Pélagie commands a ten-year odyssey up the Atlantic coast from Georgia to Acadie.

Antonine Maillet, a native of Bouctouche, New Brunswick, has spent her life conjuring the impossible into being. She is the author of wry and wildly inventive adult fiction, children's books, radio and television scripts, and more than a dozen plays.

Maillet's sparkling imagination, versatility, and commitment to giving Acadian culture a voice have been recognized at home and abroad. She was the first non-citizen of France to win the prestigious Prix Goncourt, which she received for Pélagie-la-Charette. Her now classic monologue La Sagouine won the Chalmers Canadian Play Award; Don l'Orignal won the Governor General's Award for Fiction; and On the Eighth Day, Wayne Grady's rollicking translation of Le Huitième Jour, won the Governor General's Award for Translation.