• Age: 15
• Grade: 10

In May 1936, George Dalziel flew far up the Nahanni River to check on Bill Eppler and Joe Mulholland, who were working one of his traplines. He found their cabin burned to the ground and no sign of them anywhere. What had happened to the healthy young men? Had there been an accident, or was a killer on the loose?

Dalziel, known as The Flying Trapper, had a successful trapping operation along the Flat, South Nahanni and Liard rivers. Using his small airplane to locate areas rich in marten and beaver, he would leave his men in this wild country and drop in from time to time to check on them and fly out the pelts. The authorities wanted to shut Dal down. So when he saw the burned-down cabin, he knew he was in trouble.

In Above the Falls, a suspenseful, fact-based novel, John Harris uses RCMP reports and the testimony of local trappers to paint a vivid picture of a gripping winter chase, an unsolved mystery and a now-vanished lifestyle in the great northern wilderness.

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Above the Falls

This engaging and suspenseful novel is based on historical facts, RCMP reports and local trappers’ testimony. The main story surrounds the mystery of what might have occurred and what in reality did occur in the deaths, in May 1936, of trappers Bill Eppler and Joe Mulholland around the Nahanni River. The story centres on the pivotal characters of George Dalziel, “The Flying Trapper,” and Francis John Wade, a mysterious war veteran suffering from post-traumatic shock syndrome and nightmarish hallucinations. The story culminates in the winter hunt for the killer and the mistaken blame for the deaths.

An afterword includes mini-biographies of many of the characters in the story.

John Harris has written travel literature, fiction and literary criticism, among them Diary of a Lakeand Other Art.

Caution: Some language may be offensive.