Evangeline: a Tale of Acadie

The “Expulsion of the Acadians” or “le Grand Dérangement” is one of the saddest chapters in the history of the colonial struggle between Britain and France. This is the story of Evangeline and Gabriel, two young Acadians who were cruelly separated on the very day in which they were to be wed. Evoking both the geography and the spirit of “La Belle Acadie,” Longfellow’s sweeping tale takes us from the tide-washed shores of Nova Scotia’s Minas basin, across the the vast breadth of 18th-century America, from the Louisiana bayous to the foothills of the Ozarks, to its final, heart-wrenching conclusion in the plague-ridden poorhouses of Philadelphia.

Bob Connon reads Longfellow’s epic story of the Acadian diaspora and of Evangeline’s long and fruitless search for her beloved Gabriel.