Back when we were planning our visit to the Maritimes I was doing some research on the area and happened upon some Canadian history. It was about the expulsion of 11,500 Acadian people (French Colonists living in Canada's Maritime Region) from the Maritimes as a result of not signing oaths with the British. The Acadians feared that signing such an oath would anger the Native Americans living there, and were also not loyal to the British, so they refused to sign it. 1/3 of the expelled Acadians died at sea from disease or drowning. Many families were split up, and many of the people were forced to settle along the Mississippi river.

This was something that I had not learned about at all in school, so I was really surprised by it, and interested in learning more. It turns out Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the American poet wrote an epic poem called Evangeline, about a fictional woman who upon being expelled from Acadia is in search of her lost love Gabriel. This poem is written in a way to mimic Greek and Latin epics.

I suppose critics have all sorts of things to say about it, but here are my thoughts:

It's lovely that Longfellow thought to write on something that was such a tragedy, but also to turn it into a story that many could follow and be engrossed in.

Overall I didn't find the poem too hard to read, while it is written in dactylic hexameter ... I didn't find myself struggling too much to get through it or comprehend it. It is only about 60 pages long in a small sized book as well, so it makes for a quick read.

See Full Review Here: http://simplyalexandramyfavoritethings.blogspot.com/2015/09/evangeline-reading-classics.html