George Hunt, the protagonist of British author Harry Whitehead’s debut novel, makes quite a first impression: “Disgusting orgies? I am guilty of it all. Blood dripping off my godless fangs, black in the flame-light roaring in the centre of the greathouse. Cavorting heathens. Me: legs kicking up, naked member swinging, masks of bear and wolf and raven turning all about, carved wood mouths clack-clacking.” As an introduction to a turn-of-the-century Canadian figure, one could do worse.

The year is 1900. Hunt, the son of a white father and native mother, is a tribal chief and shaman of the Kwagiulth people on the B.C. coast. He is also an assistant to ethnographer Franz Boas, capturing the lore of his people and acquiring objects for New York’s Museum of Natural History while watching his world die under the onslaught of alcohol, Christianity, and white European culture.

Whitehead’s powerful novel begins with the arrival by steamer of the body of Hunt’s son, David, who has died of tuberculosis. The traditional funerary rites Hunt insists on draw the ire of a local priest, and Hunt, who has never been truly accepted by either the native or white world, takes to the bush. His white son-in-law, Harry, who trades in illegal whiskey, is sent into the wilderness to retrieve Hunt to face charges of participation in an illegal ceremony and cannibalism.

The Cannibal Spirit is a compelling, complex novel, free of caricature and facile responses to its subject matter. Based (one assumes fairly loosely) on the historical record, Whitehead has created a unique work that immerses the reader in a culture at a crisis point. Hunt’s awkward location between native and white cultures serves as a microcosm for the encroachment of Canada and Christianity onto aboriginal society. Hunt is beaten and beleaguered, struggling to make sense of epochal changes and essentially destroying himself in the process. Unflinching and rigorously unsentimental, The Cannibal Spirit is a thought-provoking and impressive read.