East of James Bay, at the base of Hudson Bay, the lake-pocked granite of the Canadian Shield stretches for thousands of square miles. When, in 1971, the James Bay Development Corporation announced that it would build a series of gigantic dams and reservoirs here, the area was described as barren, uninhabited, and fit for nothing but flooding. Yet there were people who lived on this land and cared deeply about it. For uncounted centuries it had been the central homeland, the hunting grounds, the "garden" (as old Job Bearskin calls it), of some 6,000 Cree. To produce this book, the journalist Boyce Richardson, left his job to absorb himself in the Cree people's fight, travelling with them on their traplines and sitting with them through hours of courtroom testimony.