Book Review

By Derryll White

Deverell, William (2024).  The Long-Shot Trial.

Sometimes, the truth is buried so deep that only a criminal defense attorney can dig it out. – A defense attorney

Arthur Beauchamp, a mostly-retired trial lawyer with a rich history, is moved to defend himself against his biographer. Unauthorized it may be but the book tells tales that embarrass Arthur’s wife, former MP for the Islands and leader of the Green Party.  Reading Beauchamp’s attempts to unravel and then satisfactorily explain his past is painfully funny.  Think about trying to go back almost 60 years and explain yourself and your transgressions – fraught with peril, right?

So place on top of that a revisionist history of yourself, in print, and one might be inclined to unlawyerly licentious thought.

Deverell does several things in this novel. He explores writing, it’s meaning, personal value and potential power. He also explores some societal values and history that not everyone will agree with. He does all this in a respectful way, putting into his story the reasoning Arthur Beauchamp had and how that has changed with time.

This is a rich tale. Not everyone will agree with all of it, but all who read it will be moved to thought and personal reflection. And after all, isn’t that why we write?

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Excerpts from the novel:

PRAYERS – As a youngster in the 1940s, I had attended Sunday school (religiously) and was a firm believer in even the most fantastical tales from the Old Testament.  I endured the requisite nightmares of roasting in hell, somewhat in the manner of a sizzling chicken in an oven.  I pictured Satan not with horns but with the little brush mustache of Adolph Hitler.  I knelt at bedtime, hands clasped, cajoling the Lord to save, in ascending order, our cat Jasper, Daddy, mommy and me,

    Though I grew out of that, achieving by my teens a healthy level of agnostic doubt, the effects of early indoctrination and longtime habit had me sporadically attending Anglican services in Vancouver and, latterly, Garibaldi Island, where I chum with the local minister.  In the course of all this, I have met some saintly people.  Not many, but a few.

WRITING – Why am I driven to expose in print my former self?  Why am I reliving that daunting, fearsome trial from 1966?  Am I merely seeking to correct the record, as sensationalized by Wentworth Chance, in his revisionist history, “A Will to Die For”?  Or is there a nobler, introspective purpose?  A striving to acquaint myself with young Arthur, so that I may better know myself?  Somehow over the decades, I lost sight of this raw, anxious, yet ambitious 29-year-old.  Only when I began to render you on the page, Stretch, did I begin to recognize you.  And thus myself.  This old man.

RECONCILIATION – “…they see us, their elders, as having been defeated.”

    “Defeated?”

    “Programmed into inaction by the religious schools.”  A look of pain, like a wince.  “Yes, I was one of them, taken from my parents, denied my heritage, my language, even my name.  I was a number.  I was known as Number 157.”
“I’m sorry…”

    “Excuse me, I don’t accept pity, it has no value.  Understand, I am proud of this new generation.  These kids aren’t going to allow your culture and religion and customs to be forced down their throats anymore.  They’re tired of sitting and waiting, Mr. Beauchamp.  They’re tired of being treated like shit.”

A GOOD INDIAN – Four years ago, I had bonded with Gabriel Swift while defending him for murder.  An angry, brilliant militant of the Squamish Nation, he had survived the residential schools, their horrors. His words had stayed with me.  My dad taught me never to be a good Indian.  That’s what they want, good Indians.  Lobotomized in their religio-fascist schools.

– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them.  When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org

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