A. J. B. Johnston is an award-winning Canadian historian and novelist. For his books on French colonial history in Atlantic Canada, France made him a chevalier of its Ordre des Palmes Académiques. His first foray into fiction was the three Thomas Pichon Novels, which explore ambition and betrayal in 18th-century France and England. His website is ajbjohnston.com. He is on Facebook at A J B Johnston, Writer, and also posts on Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter.Praise for The Hat"Wonderful story! Sure to be a favorite of all who read it." - Hugh R. MacDonald, author of Trapper Boy and Us and Them"It's a great novel that should be translated into French." Claude DeGrâce, Managing Director, Société Promotion Grand-Pré.The HatIt's a gusty August morning ... two children spot sails on the horizon ... foreign soldiers enter their village.This is how it begins for Marie and Charles, aged 14 and 10. Day by day, the sister and brother--and everyone else in the village--live with building suspense. They watch with bewilderment, then deepening concern, as men-at-arms from another land take over the local church and build a fort. What is going on? With each passing day, the complications and troubles mount. Everything in the village is upended. Charles and Marie are only kids, but they have to find ways to deal with the difficult situations in which they find themselves. They have to be wise and brave beyond their years. A. J. B. Johnston holds the reader close to tell this moving tale. The main characters, Marie and Charles, are fictional, but the story is not. It is based on well-documented historical facts concerning the Acadian Deportation from Grand Pre in 1755. The Hat presents that well-known event in a fresh way, for 21st-century readers. It is a poignant, suspenseful novel about how two kids and a village deal with forces and events far beyond their control.