In Cloud of Bone by Bernice Morgan (Knopf), Kyle, a wild young man from St. John’s, Newfoundland, runs away from the navy during World War II and is indelibly marked by Shanawdithit, the last of the Beothuk aboriginal group, who had died more than a century before. Both Kyle’s and Shanawdithit’s stories are of poverty and violence: Kyle lives the life of a poor, uneducated Newfoundlander, and Shanwdithit begins her nomadic life in a warm, supportive family group that travels throughout the territory to take advantage of abundant hunting grounds, but then watches as “dogmen” drive them from their traditional places and leave them hungry and afraid in their own country. A third (and less successful) section of the book takes place in modern times and links Kyle and Shanawdithit with Judith, a modern-day anthropologist. In both this and her previous books, Morgan writes history in such a way that one feels present in that time and place, whether it is the streets of St. John’s during a rowdy brawl between American and Canadian sailors, or on the land with a young girl who thinks that the seasons are unique to certain places and that her family travels to those places in order to enjoy each season.