It was the images that made this object the most beautiful thing she had ever held in her hands. Mysteriously, some texts were written in French, but the ornate way in which the letters were printed obscured their meaning. Outside, snow fell thickly; she pulled a blanket over her knees, remembered how Acadian French still spoken in her family home was ridiculed by classmates in her first year of High School French.

Underlying parochial school stories -- of the 17th Century French founding of the Acadian colony in the New World and of the subsequent Grand Derangement -- was a family legend. According to her Grandfather, long ago on a back route to Quebec, her family had escaped the sinking of entire ships carrying deported Acadian families and -- for those who survived -- the breaking of the Acadian heritage with deportation to so many locations that they would all never meet again.