The downpour on the evening of May 1st did not deter attendees from yet another book launch at Take Cover Books for Assistant English Professor Aaron Kreuter. 

Well-attended by Trent faculty and alumni, the launch comes only a year after Kreuter's short story collection Rubble Children hit shelves at the East City bookstore. Kreuter presented two selections from the novel, which were interspersed in a discussion with fellow Trent professor Kelly McGuire.

Kreuter’s latest Lake Burntshore is his first novel, a coming-of-age novel about a tumultuous summer at a Jewish sleepaway camp in the Muskokas. Its characters, namely its protagonist Ruby, must deal with the consequences of the camp’s hiring of five Isreali Defence Force (IDF) soldiers and the proposed acquisition of Crown land for the camp’s expansion by the camp’s owner, much to the dismay of the neighbouring First Nation. 

Filled with tension, teen romance, and lots of pot, Kreuter explores Jewish cultural identity through its characters and the totality of their relationships, including that of the land.

“I'm always drawn to fiction or narratives that exist in an enclosed space,” Kreuter told Arthur. “We’re really able to get into characters and relationships that way, and summer camp presented itself as a great bounded geography to explore settler, diasporic, and Indigenous relationships.” 

Lake Burntshore is where Kreuter further explores Jewish cultural identity and its misuse within diasporic microcosms like Jewish summer camps. A key scene Kreuter read from at the event depicts campers getting into the first of many arguments about regional bagels from cities with a notable Jewish diaspora, like Toronto and Montreal.

Kreuter clarified that this scene is followed by the introduction of the camp’s controversial choice to hire IDF soldiers after a staffing shortfall, a normal occurence in summer camps with predominantly Jewish children. 

“It's not an accident that this discussion about bagels happens before,” Kreuter explained to attendees. “Diasporic food is juxtaposed with bringing these soldiers into the camp to play with common symbols of this nation [of Isreal] and the diaspora.”

Lake Burntshore is not all bleak in its subject matter, though: Kreuter employs his typical dry humour to frankly discuss such an intrinsically Jewish experience.

“Going to summer camp, it's a major part of our identity,” Kreuter told McGuire after she asked where he finds himself in the novel.

“Almost before I knew who I was, I wanted to be a writer. I remember being 16 and telling myself that I have to write a novel about camp. That was something that always drew me.”

Kreuter further explained this incorporation of experience to Arthur, wishing to illustrate the true diversity of the Jewish diaspora in Canada. 

“I definitely wanted to not only show that these tensions in the Jewish community exist and that not all Jewish people are beholden to the state of Israel, but also show a way forward, to try and live more diasporically than through an ethnonationalist state."

“If a character is believable and you can see where they're coming from, you're going to hear what they say, but you also hear the opposite,” Kreuter told attendees.

“Zionism is a dominant narrative in the Jewish world,” he continued. “These tensions and these other ways of being Jewish in the world, and other ways of Jewish belonging have always, always been present.”

“They were buried for a very long time because of the success of the Zionist settler project, and that's why I want to show these different viewpoints,” Kreuter said. 

The exploration of colonization in all its forms is a throughline in all of Kreuter’s works, and he doesn’t narrow his focus to a singular relationship to land. Kreuter includes a diverse cast of characters which not only challenges the common idea of what diaspora is, but also shows how our various relationships to the land and its history shape who we are. 

Using the backdrop of cottage country, Kreuter interrogates colonialism and land relations on an individualized scale through how characters in Lake Burntshore react to their environment and the history beneath the romantic Canadian image of Southern Ontario.

“What we call cottage country and Canada are still the frontline of issues of land rights, resource extraction, Indigenous rights,” Kreuter told Arthur. “This is where it's still very much alive, as it’s also where a lot of people from the cities go to spend their summers and where the summer camps are.

“I think it's still a real microcosm of the settler colonial project. And it can possibly be where a real move towards justice emerges from.”

Lake Burntshore is now available to purchase at Take Cover Books online or in-store.