Wilmont Kreis

In 1742 the legendary voyageurs Joseph Parent and Pierre Roy appear to recruit Pierre and Toussaint for a voyage to the west. Parent and Roy are actual characters from history but I must confess that I have romanticized them a bit. I hope their descendants don’t object. I have taken the greatest liberty with Pierre making him the quintessential voyager with a body of steel, brain of wood and heart of gold. Of all hundreds of characters in the Allard series, he is certainly one of my favorites. Read More 

In 1734 Jean-Baptiste Allard and Joseph are invited to travel to Detroit where they had gone years before with Antoine Cadillac. They bring along their now eighteen year old sons, Pierre and Toussaint giving the boys the opportunity to see the City in the Wilderness and meet some of its younger residents including the son of an Indian chief—a young man known as Pontiac who will play a large part in The Allards Book Four: The Voyager. Read More 

As with all eight books of the Allard Series, Book Three begins with a scene from the present, in this case an iceboat scene on Lake St. Clair. Growing up in the 1950’s on this diminutive body of water in the chain of Great Lakes, I could not write about the area without including this magical craft. In my life I have had some thrilling experiences, but I remember a ride in my father’s iceboat as the most thrilling by far. I even included a possibly anachronistic scene in the body of the book. Read More 

Young Pierre Allard is completely Canadian. For his generation, France is only a word heard on rare occasions in tales of days long past. The Allard family has continued its close relationship with the Algonquin family of old Henri. His grandson, Joseph has married a girl with an Algonquin mother and French trapper father making the family metis or mixed blood as they take on the family name of de Baptiste. His son, Toussaint will become the lifelong friend of young Pierre Allard. Read More 

The Allards Book Three: Peace and War follows the Allard family from 1725 to 1761. Opening on the Peace of Utrecht, French Quebec is enjoying a peaceful and productive period. The lack of hostilities in Europe has resulted in tranquility in the colony where he habitants can tend their fields and enjoy life. Unfortunately life in the wilderness is generally not so tranquil for long when a great plague robs many families of their children. Ultimately the peace ends in 1750 with renewed hostilities across the sea which will spread westward across the Atlantic resulting in the ultimate fall of French Canada to the British in 1760.  Read More 

Some years later, the boys unite with Antoine one last time for the longest voyage of all, from Quebec to the Gulf of Mexico where they set Fort New Orleans and rescue a runaway slave named Tom, whose descendants will follow the Allard Series up to the American Civil War and beyond.
Now we’ll return to Quebec for a while and follow the Allards to the French and Indian War in Book Three: Peace and War. Read More 

Some years later, Cadillac again enlists Jean-Baptiste and Joseph to travel with him to set a post on a river connecting Lakes Erie and St. Clair. He names the post with the French term for narrow straights: Détroit. The boys stay here for the early days of this city in the wilderness which will become a focus of the remainder of the Allard Series. Photo: Detroit today, Cadillac’s Fort was located on land just to the left of the Renaissance Center. Read More 

During a scouting party for Cadillac in now northern Michigan, the boys encountered a wooden ship hidden on a small river. The lost ship of LaSalle and first ship on the Great Lakes, the Griffin, had been abandoned with a hold full of furs. When Cadillac discovers this, he swears the boys to secrecy and uses the furs to his personal advantage, later taking the empty boat into the lake and sinking it in deep water where it would remain for centuries. Needless to say, some of this story is my invention. Read More 

Following a few years raiding English ships with the famous French-Canadian privateer, Francois Guyon, Antoine Cadillac appeared at the home of young Jean-Baptiste Allard, now eighteen years of age. In a local tavern, he had heard the story of Jean-Baptiste and Joseph’s heroism against the Iroquois raiding party. Like most unreliable people, Cadillac trusted almost no one, but he developed a trust in Jean-Baptiste that would serve them both for some time. Jean-Baptiste and Joseph agreed to accompany him as personal guards to set a fort and trading post at the straits between what are now known as the upper and lower peninsulas of Michigan. A place the natives called Michillimackinac. Read More 

Antoine Cadillac is, in my opinion, one of the four most interesting historical figures in the history of Detroit (Gabriel Richard, Augustus Woodward and Henry Ford are the others). I’ll touch on them later. Cadillac came to New France as a young adventurer; he brought with him an impressive pedigree which, as with many things Cadillac, was false. He detested the Jesuits, held the natives in the lowest regard, was able to convince the authorities of whatever suited him, and was constantly in search of what benefitted him. Read More