Stitches of Tradition

 

Stitches of Tradition / Marcie Rendon,
illus. by Mangeshig Pawis-Steckley
NY: HarperCollins, c2024.

This Ojibwe story honours the ribbon skirt as a tradition that stitches together generations. A young girl gets her first ribbon skirt thanks to her grandmother's sewing prowess. They measure and cut and create a skirt for her to wear to a baby naming ceremony — and then as she grows older, new ribbon skirts to wear to a Fall Ceremony, a swearing in as her aunt becomes a district judge, and finally to her own coming of age ceremony. As she grows, she learns to help with the sewing and continue the traditions. The text features repeated paragraphs that both ground the story and move it forward, making it an engaging read aloud.

The text and illustrations are both by Ojibwe artists, one from Minnesota and one from Barrie. Together they've created a heart warming book about the connections between generations of women and the traditions that bind families. The text is sprinkled with Ojibwe terms, with a glossary and an author's note at the back, explaining the importance of ribbon skirts. The topic and the colour saturated illustrations make this a visually appealing book for young readers and their elders. It's a gentle story full of love, connection, and sewing! I loved it. 

REDress: Art, Action, and the Power of Presence

 

REDress / Jaime Black-Morsette, ed.
Winnipeg, MB: Portage & Main Press, c2025.
160 p.

Today's book is a feature for National Indigenous People's Day, June 21. I read this from my library, and it was a powerful read. It looks at art and how artistic projects have been used to draw attention to issues in the Indigenous community in Canada, particularly the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women campaign. (MMIW)

The title refers both to actual redress of wrongs, and to the Red Dress project, the best known project to draw attention to MMIW. This project uses red dresses, hung from trees, clotheslines, and in public spaces, to represent lives lost in this ongoing tragedy. It's a project that was begun by artist Jaime Black-Morsette, the editor of this collection. It's been installed in a variety of museums as well, and it is haunting. This book gives a bit of the history and purpose of this activist art installation.

There are also essays on other activist art projects, like beaded moccasin vamps also meant to draw attention to missing women. There are a number of ways that clothing has been used symbolically in the works included in this anthology, alongside other essays and statements from Indigenous women, Elders, grassroots community activists, artists, academics, and family members affected by the scourge of MMIW. 

There are many clear photos and imagery to support the essays, and the book is very well produced. While the theme makes it a hard read at times, it's so important, and I felt it was a great look at this topic as well as 15 years of the Red Dress Project. Definitely worth searching out. 

Dorothy Grant, An Endless Thread

 

Dorothy Grant: An Endless Thread / Dorothy Grant
Victoria, BC: Figure 1 Publishing, c2024.
176 p.

I came across this book in my library's online catalogue; until then I hadn't heard of Dorothy Grant. I'm so glad I found this! Grant is a West Coast Haida designer from what is now Alaska. She began designing in 1989 with her show called Feastwear, which launched her into a very successful career selling first in a boutique, and then via trunk shows and bespoke items.

This book is partly a memoir of her career and partly a look-book of her many pieces and designer lines. There are photos of many Indigenous celebrities and leaders wearing her work, as well as politicians -- one image of Governor General Mary Simon greeting Pope Francis during his visit to apologize for Residential School harms has her wearing a white Dorothy Grant capelet that echoes the Pope's robes, something I found fascinating.

Grant's work has also been collected by museums and galleries. Her designs incorporate traditional Haida motifs as well as garment types and kinds of embellishments like shellwork and embroidery, or traditional spruce root weaving. They play those elements off of modern design to create amazing pieces. 

This book was put together for a retrospective at Haida Gwaii Museum in 2024, so there are also essays by the curator, India Rael Young, and Haida repatriation specialist and museologist Sdahl Ḵ’awaas Lucy Bell, alongside some of Grant's own reflections and memories, and those of her longtime assistant, Haida curator and artist Kwiaahwah Jones. All this, plus the many large photos, make this book a wonderful read, with so much to examine. I really enjoyed it. If you can find a copy, I would recommend it to any fashion lover. 

You can find lots of fascinating information and fashion on Dorothy Grant's website, too,

(Flip through with more images, details and a short video interview with the author can be found on the publisher's website) 

Christian Allaire's The Power of Style

 

The Power of Style / Christian Allaire 
TO: Annick Press, c2021.
96 p.

This is a book aimed at younger readers, the teen demographic. It talks about clothing and style, and how fashion choices can represent identity, signal belonging, and help people express themselves fully. 

Christian Allaire is an Ojibwe fashion writer at Vogue, and he put together this book to show the kinds of fashion, style, and people he didn't see in fashion when he was a teen. He shares Indigenous content -- ribbon skirts/shirts, beading and more -- but also then goes on to cover topics like drag, hijabs, makeup, hair and cosplay, to point out the connections between fashion and social justice. 

This is a photo heavy book, fairly short, so I did find it didn't get into heavy sociological depths -- it is an intro, a survey class if you will, for readers new to these ideas. It's colourful, celebratory, and joyful despite some of the more serious themes. 

I would like to see future volumes more narrowly focused on some of the themes of these chapters, as at times the transitions between chapters felt jumpy because there was so much to cover. But if you have a younger reader interested in cultural identities, gender, and the wider fashion world, this would be a great book to share with them. The many photos really give it visual appeal, almost magazine style, and there are lots of thoughtful threads to follow further. I thought it was very interesting! 

From the Rez to the Runway

From the Rez to the Runway / Christian Allaire 
TO: HarperCollins, c2025.
272 p.

June is National Indigenous History Month in Canada. I shared a few reviews of some books by Indigenous writers on my sewing blog this month, and am going to share them here this week as well. I'll start with this fascinating memoir!

Christian Allaire (author of The Power of Style) has just published a memoir about his rise from Ojibwe teen from Northern Ontario to Vogue fashion writer -- and it's a great read! He's really honest about the trials and tribulations of reaching his goals, recognizing both his own hard work and his luck. As well as the support he received from his family and community. 

He shares how he was always into fashion, reading magazines, watching Fashion Televison & admiring Jeanne Beker, and dressing himself as style-forward as he could with thrift store finds and more. He decided to go into fashion journalism and headed to Toronto, where he found himself one of the few Indigenous students in the journalism program, and certainly in the fashion journalism subset. 

During school he also interned and worked very hard to make connections that might lead to work or further opportunities - he seems to have had endless energy and drive at this time. In this section, he mentions that the professors told him he shouldn't be working, that he should be focusing on academics instead - but that it was all the work he was doing that led to the footholds he was able to get in the industry. This is a great point for many students to think about. 

When he moves to New York to take on some internships, the stories get wilder, until he realizes he needs to take control of his life and manage addictions, so that he can succeed instead of burning out and disappearing. There are lots of entertaining stories during his internship years, including one at a magazine where a roomful of Chanel couture was inadvertently destroyed (not by him), or when a celebrity wore all the designer clothes from a shoot home, and Christian, an intern, had to go get these pieces back to return to the designers in the morning. 

But he also shares stories of how being true to himself and his Indigenous community led to opportunities, especially at Vogue. His pieces on the Santa Fe Indian Market and a variety of Indigenous beaders, designers, jewellers and more were big hits, and he was able to parlay this into the right role at just the right time. And when the book ends, he is giddy, at the peak - he's on the red carpet at the Met Gala, interviewing guests. 

This is an engaging memoir from an important voice in the fashion community right now. I enjoyed the structure and the progression of the book and thought it was well done, incorporating a variety of stories for someone so early into their career. Definitely worth a look!

Drew Hayden Taylor's "Cold"

Cold / Drew Hayden Taylor
TO: McLelland & Stewart, c2024.
359 p.

This is a book I would not have normally picked up -- it's a horror/thriller with hockey, middle aged men, and gore. But, it's also by Drew Hayden Taylor. I've read quite a few of his books and usually enjoy them -- everything he does is leavened with humour, and I find his Indigenous themes are compelling and engaging. So I read it. 

It is a bit more horror-ish than I usually like, especially with the few explicitly gory scenes. But it is also horror-lite enough for this squeamish reader. The story has three character arcs, which begin to converge the further into the book you go. We start with a plane crash in Northern Ontario during a blizzard, where we meet journalist Fabiola Halan, who is originally from the Caribbean, and hates the cold. She and the pilot survive the crash, and a year or so later, Fabiola is on a Canada wide book tour with the story of her experience.

Now in Toronto, we meet Professor Elmore Trent, an Indigenous studies prof who is having an affair with a student while his marriage is falling apart. We also encounter Paul North, an aging hockey player in the IHL (Indigenous Hockey League) who is facing the end of his career. And Detective Ruby Birch, who is investigating a string of unusual murders, brings them all together. 

We uncover Indigenous folklore and monstrous creatures during this story, alongside social commentary and the individual story arcs of each character. There are ruminations and reflections on a variety of themes, whether Indigenous topics or questions of aging, relationship ethics, or the way that office politics shows up in academia and the sports world alike. I liked a lot in this story, including the way that Prof. Trent throws in references to other Indigenous writers throughout. Lots to follow up on! There were some interesting developments in the plot and some outrageously over the top scenes too. 

I did find that the writing was a bit dry in parts, for a thriller, and some editing issues that caught my attention (a copyedit eye is a curse sometimes!) I wasn't fully sold on the conclusion either; it made sense within the storyline but I didn't love it. But, it was fun and campy in parts, while also being dark and intriguing in others. It was creative and original, and could be one that a lot of different kinds of readers would enjoy. Worth a look!

 

Funeral Songs for Dying Girls

 

Funeral Songs for Dying Girls / Cherie Dimaline
TO: Tundra, c2023.
271 p.

I read this one quickly, as it's a YA novel and by Cherie Dimaline - I have read most of her books so far. I liked it alright, it hooked me enough to keep reading but overall I ended up feeling meh about it. 

Winifred lives in a cemetery with her father; he has a job at the crematorium there. Her mother died when she was born so it's just the two of them. She wanders around moodily in the graveyard, and is eventually mistaken for a ghost, which brings the economic potential of ghost tours to their small and failing cemetery. 

Just this would have been enough for an interesting story, but there is also the angst of Winifred's so-called best friend Jack betraying her to his buddies, the father who is more involved with the memory of his dead wife than with Winifred herself, the potential loss of their home and livelihood, and, oh yes, the real ghost in the graveyard.

Win conjures the ghost of a girl around her own age, an Indigenous girl from the country who ended up dying in the ravine below the cemetery thanks to bad company. Phil is angry and punk, and she and Win end up spending a lot of the book mad at each other while simultaneously navigating their attraction to one another. Phil is also jealous of Jack every time he shows up, and this adds more teen angst. 

There are some good bits to this story, some nice interactions, especially with Win's Aunt Roberta. But there are also some characters who are more caricature, and the pace of the book was uneven to me. I liked it but didn't quite love it, which is often the case for me with Dimaline's writing. It's unique and has some thoughtful content that could spark discussion, but the uneven pacing/plotting and conclusion let me down a little. 

Manikanetish

Manikanetish / Naomi Fontaine
trans. from the French by 
TO: Arachnide, c2021.
153 p.

This is a small story about Yammie, an Innu woman who left her community on Quebec's North Shore, and has now returned as a teacher. She has a classroom full of rather disaffected students; they see no future for themselves and are not engaged in learning the French language that she is responsible for teaching. 

This small story moves between Yammie's own experiences both in her childhood and with her current French boyfriend still living in Quebec City and getting impatient with her decision to teach Up North, away from him. That's rolled into the lives of these students that she is beginning to care for, in regard to both their schooling and the issues in their lives. 

Yammie decides that her class will put on a French play, to liven things up and give them a different way to approach French and learning in general. This seems to spark something and the class, even some of the most antagonistic boys, get into it and want to be involved. It brings out new characteristics in some of the students, even while it's not enough to change to fates of others. 

In some ways, this brief and bittersweet book reminds me of Gabrielle Roy and her novels and stories about young teachers in one-room schoolrooms across the prairies. It has the same sense of a young teacher feeling their way with students not too much younger than they are, and becoming a part of the students lives in unexpected ways. The language is also laden with that odd sense of nostalgia that can be found in Roy's writing; in this novel Yammie is telling her story in the present tense, but it feels like she's looking back at it and drawing out the poignancy of her time at the school. 

It's an unusual book, sharing the daily life of a community that isn't represented a lot, and it is told by an author who is a member of the Innu nation. It's one that is worth reading, to get a perspective on a life and a community that can be overlooked in Canadian literature. 

 

The Sentence

The Sentence / Louise Erdrich
NY: Harper, c2021
387 p.

I read this last year and it was one of the best of the year for me. As promised, I'm finally getting around to sharing my thoughts on it! 

I'll always read a Louise Erdrich book, without even having to know anything about it. But this one was especially interesting. Written during and about the pandemic, it has an immediacy to it, an urgency that overrides her usual considered pace and tells the story in a rush, with lively contemporary characters. I loved it. 

There have been a few books I have seen lately set during the early months/year of the pandemic, but this is the only I've read that feels natural and life-like. Erdrich has a good sense of character and of course a very skillful style, so the book moves forward smoothly and naturally.

It starts with Tookie, a woman who survived years of imprisonment by reading intensely -- and now that she is out of jail, she's found a job at a Minneapolis bookstore run by 'Louise'. Tookie is a complex and many-layered character, and somehow she made a connection with Flora, a former regular at the bookstore. Flora has died, but she hasn't left the bookstore. At first Tookie is the only one to realize it but the other employees eventually notice as well. 

Tookie's marriage and relationship with her step-daughter are also complex, and lovingly described. She is a real book person, and I appreciated her interactions with varied customers -- those are the kind of book discussions I love to have as a librarian, with our patrons. But Tookie also has many repressed issues to manage as a woman, an Indigenous person, a wife and mother, and from her own childhood. She's also quite sarcastically funny, which makes her a wonderful character I couldn't get enough of.

Tookie's journey would have been enough for a story, but add in the bookstore haunting, her intriguing fellow employees and their stories, the vital role of books, and of course the appearance of the Pandemic and months of panic and isolation, as well as the explosive political moment of Black Lives Matter, and this book is bursting with deep ideas to explore. As the publisher's write-up starts, "The Sentence asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book." I think that sums up the intensity of the storyline, which is aided by the strong writing and the vital, breathing characters. 

A bonus is the seven page reading list shared at the end. If you love books and believe in the power of reading, and are looking for a novel for our moment, this one is highly recommended. 

The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour

 

The Prairie Chicken Dance Tour / Dawn Dumont
Calgary: Freehand Books, c2021
304 p.

I've been looking forward to this novel by the very funny and sharp Saskatchewan writer, Dawn Dumont. I read it as soon as it was released, and loved it. It's a return to the zany caper energy of her earlier Rose's Run, a novel I also greatly enjoyed. 

This story is set in the 70s, and it follows a ragtag group who heads to Europe to fulfill a dance tour commitment, when the real dance troupe comes down with food poisoning just before they are about to leave. John Greyeyes, retired cowboy and brother of the band chief, is arm-twisted into running this makeshift tour. He's in charge of two female dancers -- Edna, a middle aged woman with arthritis, and Desiree, her niece -- and Lucas Pretends Eagle, an American who is supposed to be a star dancer. John has to shepherd them to Europe, keep on their itinerary, teach Edna and Desiree to dance in the meantime, and get them all home again, on just a few hundred bucks upfront. Just a tiny challenge. 

There are shenanigans right from the start. From their flight to Europe which does not go as planned, to their performances at the Indigenous World Gathering and on into Germany and Italy, John is performing damage control. And it's Edna, who is keeping a journal of their trip which appears at the beginning of each chapter, who becomes the surprise star of the story (at least for me!) 

Dumont takes on many serious issues in this novel -- from misogyny, racism, the fetishization of "Indians" by Germans in particular and Europeans more widely, residential school effects, religion, and sexual orientation, to the way society turns Indigenous people against themselves, and questions of ownership of Indigenous artefacts and culture. But the book is also hilarious. In one unexpected turn after another, something nutty is happening. Beyond the plot devices, there are also sly digs at every stereotype you can think of, and Edna in particular has the same habit of sarcastic commentary as Rose did in the earlier novel mentioned above. I laughed out loud in parts, and thought the characters were engaging even while being embroiled in slightly ridiculous events. 

But there are also serious bits, and parts where you just feel for the characters, each suffering their own secret difficulties. Edna is in constant pain from arthritis but is also deeply religious due to her residential school upbringing, which is a dissonance in her life. John, a handsome loner, finds a connection with Per Ollman, their Swedish guide to the Indigenous World Gathering in Kiruna, Sweden. He is startled by his reactions to Per, and by Per's matter-of-fact recognition that they are both gay. John struggles with this but by the end of the book he's starting to accept this new understanding of himself. 

I really enjoyed the writing style, and the mix of serious and silly in the book. It was fun, entertaining, enlightening, and has a great cast of characters. Definitely one to draw out lots of discussion and opinion, and one which engages the reader and zips by. If you enjoy Thomas King or Drew Hayden Taylor's sharply humorous novels, I think you might really like this one too. 

Blue Bear Woman

Blue Bear Woman / Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau;
trans. from the French by Susan Ouriou & Christelle Morelli
TO: Inanna, c2019, 2007.
157 p.

Bordeleau's novel was first published in 2007 in French, as the first novel by an Indigenous woman to be published in Quebec. 

It hints at memoir; the main character Victoria is also part Cree and part Quebecoise, and the book is about a lengthy road trip that she and her partner are taking along the roads around James Bay, searching for family history. 

This area of Northern Quebec is remote; the land is traditional Cree and Inuit territory, but from the 1970s to the early 2000s, it was taken and flooded as part of the James Bay Hydroelectric project. This dam and its effects on Cree life in the area is one of the themes of the novel, alongside the uncovering of the very particular family history that Victoria is revisiting. She stops in small towns along the way, running into cousins and aunties and more, all eager to relate stories and expand her memories and knowledge of her mother's family. 

The book moves back and forth between the contemporary storyline and the 1960s, where we learn about Victoria's family from her grandmother's perspective. Victoria is also having vivid dreams of her Uncle George, a hunter who disappeared in the woods over 20 years before -- it seems he wants her to find his remains and give him a proper sendoff. 

Most of the book is slower moving; it's an actual road trip, meandering here and there, finding out little details or re-engaging with distant relatives. Victoria recalls elements of her own personal past, and starts feeling closer to her Cree heritage, mentioning in passing that she's not sure her partner Daniel is really all that comfortable with her spiritual side. 

So the book seems like an historical quest, lots of information about Cree life in the recent past, and the small settlements that exist now. But then about 3/4 of the way through, Victoria's spiritual quest toward shamanism bursts to the forefront and takes over her focus. They meet up with elders and a middle-aged couple who become her spiritual guides. She knows that this development will also help her find her Uncle George. 

However, in order to develop this way, there is a certain plot point near the end that I wasn't convinced was necessary, and also found a little cold in the way it's presented. While I understood why it was there, it took me out of the story a bit. 

Overall, I found this a good read -- really evocative of a time and place, and a strong sense of family connection added to the appeal. The writing was sometimes abrupt, especially in the break between chapters/time frames, and there were a few elements that didn't really work for me. But, it was an unusual focus and a compelling one for the most part. The setting is very strong and carries a lot of the narrative. So definitely one worth checking out. 

Sufferance

Sufferance / Thomas King
TO: HarperCollins, c2021
320 p.

This one was the perfect read for me. I found it accidentally, having somehow missed that Thomas King had a new book after Indians on Vacation -- which I'd heard about endlessly, and has even won the Leacock Award recently. 

Well, Sufferance is a different kind of book. It is a strange mix of corporate thriller, small town politics, Indigenous history, and a hit of the Dead Dog Café. But it works. 

Jeremiah Camp is a Forecaster, a person with the ability to see patterns and predict how they will play out in the future. He was much in demand by a billionaire corporation, but something went bad and now he lives alone in an old Residential school adjacent to the reserve his mother was from, hiding out from the world and trying to restore the gravestones of the children buried at the school as a memorial. 

Along with living alone, he hasn't spoken aloud in years. But he does have a bit of companionship - a nameless cat, a handful of crows, and a daily trip into town to buy a brownie from the French Canadian baker and share it with a friend who owns what used to be a café. There are a few other locals that he interacts with at the sort-of café, including relatives who still live in government issue, crappy, molding trailers on the reserve. 

But nobody can stay solitary, even if they want to. Jeremiah's past returns -- his former boss has died but his daughter has taken over the company and is just as ruthless. She wants a forecast, and she won't take no for an answer. Quite literally. 

As we learn more about Jeremiah's past and why he left his job, and why he isn't very interested in going back, we also delve into questions of extreme wealth and the inequities between Jeremiah's boss' world and that of the reserve. What is the moral cost of hoarding wealth as these billionaires do? And what can people actually do about it? The answer here, as always with Thomas King, is dark and cynical, though laced with his usual humour (jokes about certain CBC radio shows appear, for example). His character is basically in existential crisis, and while there isn't a neat and tidy ending, community seems to be both his bane and his potential salvation. 

This one moved quickly, it kept me flipping the pages, and it had some thoughtful themes to chew on. Add in some laughs and a bit of a mystery, and this was a winner in my view. 

The only flaw is the cover. This has to have the worst cover I have ever seen. Black type on a dark red background, and red type on black for the flaps = completely unreadable. From a distance you can hardly tell that there is an author name or title even on the cover, and forget about accessibility in reading the flaps - I could hardly read them without angling the book for some light to throw the text into relief. My husband suggests they were going for a "oh, is this a Stephen King book?" vibe, but I don't think Thomas King needs the help. The digital image above has had a lot of colour correction to make it clear. Please disregard the cover design, which does this great book no favours. I look forward to the release of a softcover edition with a readable and appealing cover! 

My camera insists on making this more readable than it is to the eye!

Empire of Wild

Empire of Wild / Cherie Dimaline
TO: Penguin Random House, c2019.
300 p.

I've finally got around to reading this novel, after enjoying Dimaline's first book, The Marrow Thieves, a lot. This one's quite different, but also requires a leap of imagination.

In Empire of Wild, the folk story of the Rogarou comes to all too real life. The Rogarou is a werewolf-like creature that haunts the roads and woods of Métis communities. And as this story begins, Victor, new to the community via his wife, disappears. People think he's had enough and just left Joan, but she knows that couldn't be the truth. And it isn't -- he's been taken by the Rogarou.

Then Joan stumbles across Victor -- or a man who is identical to him -- at a travelling religious show. He's preaching from the stage, and when he sees her he doesn't recognize her, and he's going by a different name, the Reverend Eugene Wolff. But she's nothing but determined, and makes it her mission to restore him. 

Alongside her 12 yr old nephew Zeus (a delightful character) she makes a plan to bring Victor home. This requires much information seeking about the Rogarou from elders, tracking of the charismatic religious sect, and some risk taking when the kidnap plan is set. There's lots of great action around the community and secret corporate development plans, around the family relationships of Joan's extended family and community, and a constant thread of the solid and powerful love between Joan and Victor. 

There was a strong lead up to the conclusion, a slow build that all explodes (literally) in the end. The shape of the story is great, except for the very last few pages. I didn't see that the final pages were necessary, unless a sequel is coming. But the event that happens in the last pages doesn't seem to fit with the rest, it kind of takes away from Joan's triumph, in my view anyhow. 

Still, a really interesting concept and strong setting and characters made this an enjoyable, energetic read. 

Return of the Trickster

 

Return of the Trickster / Eden Robinson
Toronto: Penguin Random House, c2021.
320 p.

Finally, the last book in the Trickster trilogy is out! I've been waiting for this one -- I loved book one, Son of a Trickster, and book two, Trickster Drift. And of course, in between we got the tv version of the story (which I thought was pretty good but diverged quite a lot from the books, which I still prefer).

This one concludes this story of Jared, the rather mellow teenager at the heart of the series. He's really the Son of a Trickster, and as we find out here, a trickster himself, however unwillingly. 

This volume is a bit more violent and gory than the first two, with lots more action happening. Jared is still surrounded by family and by ghosts and supernatural creatures of all kinds -- he even meets a Sasquatch in this one (who's actually a pretty chill dude). It's a bit of a strange setup, since Wade (his trickster father) is basically imprisoned and unable to help throughout the book, and his mother loses some of her invincibility as well. But Jared has to force himself to step up and basically save his entire family. 

There are some gross bits in this one that I had to skim over, much more than the first two books. But there is still the sense of humour and unexpected appearances of oddball characters who help (or hinder). It's a satisfying conclusion in most ways; we get to know Jared's full nature, and so does he. And his family does prevail over their attackers, who are dark and dangerous. But I didn't feel the same spark as the first book, the bright energy of Jared's new discoveries. Still, a great finish to this series. I'd still recommend reading this set to anyone who loves contemporary Indigenous fiction, and who has a sense of black humour. Fans of Dean Koontz's Odd Thomas will also find the feel of this series familiar - if you can take supernatural violence and lots of cussing, this one's for you. 

The Night Watchman

The Night Watchman / Louise Erdrich
NY: HarperLuxe, c2020.
624 p.

I got this book from my library when it was first released, by reading the large print edition. And I'm glad I did, since my library closed shortly after that. I was really looking forward to this book, and it did not disappoint.

Erdrich has a quiet, methodical style, even when things are happening in her stories. I really enjoy her technique and the way she tells a story. Each of her books explores the lives of Indigenous women, and draws from her own life and identity. 

This book does so even more than most; it was inspired by the life of her grandfather, who fought for the survival of his tribe and their treaty rights in the face of an "emancipation bill" in the 50s, which sought to "free" Indigenous people -- basically to remove treaty rights so that the government could have all the land. Her grandfather won the fight. 

In this novel, Thomas Wazhushk, a night watchman at the local jewel bearing plant is tribal chairman and uses his boarding school education to fight for the Turtle Mountain band of Chippewa. Alongside this story, Erdrich includes the story of Thomas' niece Pixie Paranteau (who prefers to be called Patrice) and her missing sister Vera. 

Patrice is a smart girl, who wants more education and a life without a husband and children. She'd like to go to law school. She works at the jewel bearing plant, but takes some time off to go to the city to search for her older sister Vera, who'd moved there some time before and is now missing. Erdrich draws together the various dark elements of life in the "golden 50s", not so golden for anyone not white and suburban. In the city, Patrice finds drug use, prostitution, sexual violence, and more. She seems charmed though, and avoids it all for herself -- clever enough to take precautions even in her innocence, she escapes the job she'd started in a bar, finds Wood Mountain (a local boy who has followed her to the city), and together they try to track down Vera; they only find the child she's abandoned and take him home to the reservation. 

Patrice then accompanies the local contingent to Washington DC to argue against the Emancipation Bill. She is involved with all of the events of the story, and she's a strong and compelling character. She's determined, smart, hardworking, innocent, resilient and more in the face of all her personal troubles and the larger community issues. 

But all of the characters besides the main ones are also three dimensional and drawn fully. The relationships between the various families and individuals who live on the reservation are deep and tangled. The setting is rich and evocative, the writing is spare yet deeply engaging, the characters are fascinating, and the two plot lines weave around one another to explore the dangers and vicissitudes of Indigenous life in the 50s. However, both issues, of sexual violence and missing and murdered Indigenous women, and of the American government trying to dispossess treaty rights, are both ongoing today. Literally so; the current administration is trying to push through the same kind of emancipation bills right now. Erdrich's afterword is a strong statement on the status of Indigenous rights and Indigenous life throughout the last century and today. 

Nonetheless, the issues tackled in this story do not overwhelm the narrative itself. It's skillfully written, beautiful, and an essential read. Highly recommended.

Ceremony by Silko

Ceremony / Leslie Marmon Silko
NY: Random House, 1986, c1977.
262 p.

It's hard to know what to say about this classic novel. It's powerful and striking, and yet I know I didn't really understand all of it. The final pages are something I'd have to reread a few times to grasp the ending, I think. 

The story is non-linear, moving back and forth in the main character Tayo's life and experience; it also moves back to legend and storytelling in brief interludes, and has other characters sharing the past and the mythologies of the Pueblo people. You can feel the power in the storytelling even when you aren't getting it all, nevertheless. 

Tayo is only partly Pueblo, so he's held at a distance from those in his community and his own family. He's "Indian" enough to be discriminated against in the wider world, though. He has just returned home from serving in WWII, where he survived the Bataan Death March although his cousin and best friend Rocky did not. The guilt and the post traumatic stress is destroying his life, and the treatment he received from army doctors hasn't really helped. 

He is led to undergo traditional ceremony as a way to heal him and merge his fractured sense of self. Betonie, a traditional medicine man, explains the witchery of the world to him, and Tayo begins to understand his delusions, realizing that he wasn't crazy, just seeing all the world without boundaries. To create a boundary for his self is to return to regular living again. 

The book's format, with poetry and legend breaking into the more narrative chapters, reflects the theme of the story as well. The underpinning of myth and spirit underlays normal life just as it does the more 'normal' chapters of the book. 

Silko's theme of the interconnectedness of all the world, people, nature, animals, spirit, is drawn poetically and is the final 'meaning of life' such as it is. 

While Tayo is a fragment in a larger net of life, he is also a particular person in a particular setting with a particular identity. Balancing both of these truths is what brings him back to himself. 

It's an unsettling read, partly due to the violence of war that is described, and partly due to the big ideas of life and spirit. Despite the fact that the structure and style is somewhat unsettling as well, and I didn't feel I fully grasped all the shades of what Silko is trying to represent, this story is a world of its own that you can feel the energy of while you read. It's a classic which will continually open itself to new and repeated readings and meanings.

Trail of Lightning

Trail of Lightning / Rebecca Roanhorse
NY: Saga Press, c2018.
287 p.

And now for something really different! This dark apocalyptic Indigenous fantasy novel is unique and fascinating. It's a fast read, with lots of horror, romance, and creativity on show. 

I don't usually read things considered horror, but this is horror lite -- there was only one part I had to skim because it was too gross for me. Maggie Hoskie is a monster hunter: she is therefore also an outcast. She lives in Dinétah, formerly the Navajo reservation; now that there has been catastrophic climate change and most of the coastal areas of the US have disappeared, Dinétah is its own country. It was saved from flooding by a wall put up in the old days, not from good intentions. But along with its new independence has come the return of monsters and gods of Navajo legend. 

Maggie tracks and kills monsters who prey on humans, often children. She was taught & mentored by a demigod, who is now her nemesis. Let's just say she has trust issues. 

In this beginning story in the Sixth World series, there is a lot of setup, a lot of explaining this world and who is who, and how Maggie fits into it all. All of this is not boring or an info-dump, however. Roanhorse is endlessly creative and uses horror and fantasy tropes, but turns them into something new with the addition of a strong female sensibility and her Indigenous setting. The premise for the series is clearly established and the interaction between a wide variety of characters is so well done. 

There's potential romance as Maggie meets a city boy who has returned home to Dinétah; there is also betrayal and violence as she comes into contact with her nemesis in the end. Throughout the book she must balance her powers with her need to connect with her very human associates. Including many other strong women.

This was a great read, original and fast-moving, and followed up with book two already, though I haven't got to that one yet. Definitely recommended for fans of speculative horror fiction. 

Starlight

Starlight / Richard Wagamese
Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, c2018.
239 p.

This was a fraught read: it's the last, and unfinished, novel by Richard Wagamese. I didn't want to finish it, knowing that. But, of course, I did. I was glad to have the chance to read this last work, but unfortunately it wasn't as strong as I'd hoped. 

It's a story featuring Franklin Starlight, the protagonist of Medicine Walk, which I think is probably my favourite Wagamese novel.

Franklin is now middle-aged, still living on the isolated BC farm he was raised on, and settled into a bachelor life with his friend and employee Roth. 

The other strand of this story involves Emmy and her young daughter Winnie. Emmy is in a seriously abusive relationship, and one day decides to flee. She takes her daughter and steals her partner's truck, heading west as far as she can get. But she can't shake everything; her awful ex and his partner in crime spend the next year tracking her down through city streets and squalor.

She ends up in a tiny town near Franklin's farm, squatting in an abandoned house; but through a series of incidents, ends up being taken in by him as a housekeeper of sorts. It's this relationship that is the heart of the book -- they begin to change each other as Franklin becomes a little more sociable, and Emmy begins to trust the world again as he teaches her lessons from the land. 

It's a story that has more in common with Wagamese's earlier books such as Dream Wheels that with Franklin's early story in Medicine Walk, at least I think so. The tone is even, with the relationship between Franklin and Emmy fairly low-key romantic. Franklin's approach to the land is highly individual and mystical, and sometimes also a bit too much for me -- besides farming, he is also a wildlife photographer, and the descriptions of how he gets his intimate photos were a bit purpley for my tastes. The spark of light humour comes from Roth, but even that is a little old-fashioned in some ways. 

In any case, just as the drama in the story is coming to a head, there is no more book. It ends there. But one thing I was glad for was that the publisher did not try to find someone else to write it based on Wagamese's notes. Instead, they describe what he was thinking and how he intended to end it, alongside some earlier writing that indicates the direction of this book. And they include some other relevant writing that he was doing before he passed away. 

It was a fitting way to close the book. And to convince anyone who hasn't read all of his works so far to go back and pick up those missing titles. It's definitely and unmistakably a Wagamese read. 

Glass Beads

Glass Beads / Dawn Dumont
Saskatoon: Thistledown Press, c2017.
266 p.

After so much international reading last month, I've returned home -- back to Saskatchewan where I grew up, in fact! 

But this is a different Saskatchewan experience than mine was - it's the story of four Indigenous characters --  Everett Kaiswatim, Nellie Gordon, Julie Papequash, and Nathan (Taz) Mosquito --  all living in Saskatoon, the first among their families to live off the reserve.

In a set of interconnected short chapters, Dumont takes us through a couple of decades, from the 90s to the 2000s. The characters develop from shy or wild younger people to slightly older and more experienced ones, who have a deeper understanding of themselves and the elements of their lives. It's a quiet novel, in a way, often concerned with domestic decisions, and the mundane daily round of life. But this is what makes it shine.

From first dates (ie: Julie's first date with a white guy, supported by her roommates) to Everett's landlord being imprisoned for domestic violence, to their own experiences with violence, racism and figuring out who they want to be (independent? married? politician? businessperson?) the characters share a range of personalities and desires. 

As usual, I found the women more interesting; they had twice as much to manage, with sexism playing a role in their lives alongside everything else. They all seemed strong enough to survive, in their own ways, though. I did feel like Nellie was the heart of the book; from the beginning pages to the conclusion, she observed, and reset herself, and managed to find her space. 

While earlier novels I've read by Dumont had a lot more humour in them (she's a very funny writer), this more serious overview of a quartet of relationships was touching, believable, and very readable. I was involved in these lives, wanting to see how they'd sort it all out. I loved the setting, and oh, that cover! 

Definitely recommended; reflecting the concerns and desires of a particular group of people we don't hear from enough, it's honest, clear and the construction of it means you can read it bit by bit and not miss anything. Great for picking up in those short bursts of time you might have available.

It's also a nominee for the 2018 Evergreen Award, so Ontario readers, get into your libraries this month and remember to vote for your Evergreen choice! 

Corvus by Johnson

Corvus / Harold Johnson
Saskatoon: Thistledown Press, c2015. 
277 p.

I first read Johnson's The Cast Stone some years ago, and was always interested in finding a copy of this one as well, a novel which takes the collapse of the world's environment into 2084 to see the outcomes.

This year, with all the dystopian fiction I've been reading, I thought it was time to fit this one in! 

In this world, two wars over resources have been fought, and people have overwhelmingly moved north in search of water and soil that can still grow things. Most of the previous fertile soil of the prairie farmlands has been rendered into desert, dead earth, by the practices of chemical farming in the 20th/21st century. Water has dried up as the glaciers melted,  and the setting, the northern town of La Ronge, Saskatchewan, is no longer a small town of 3000 or so residents -- it's now quite a large city, with suburbs, a slum called Regis, and elite suburbs tethered in the sky above the massive storms that regularly hit these days. There's also an ashram just out of town, in which we find some of our main characters.

There's Lenore, a prosecutor and troubled war veteran, and George, a coworker who she has her eye on, who both live in La Ronge. The ashram gives us Richard, a war vet, and Katherine, a woman taken in by the ashram at 17 and who seems to be a natural, though unofficial, leader.

As the story opens George has a disappointment at work and ends up buying himself an expensive ORV (organic recreational vehicle). These are partly organic and partly tech - George buys himself a raven and takes to regular flights when he needs to think. In one storm, he crashes near an Indigenous settlement far from town. Experiencing their hospitality as he recovers, and the wisdom of an elder, Two Bears, changes the way he thinks about his life. 

Richard works on the land on the ashram and spends summers harvesting algae from the lake. He has a brief affair with Lenore before she settles on George and he settles on Katherine, but this links their stories throughout. 

Johnson tackles things that were issues in 2015, but in 2018 are scarily top of mind. Intrusive tech, government surveillance, the widening gap between rich and poor, climate change & its resultant extreme weather and soil/water conditions, valuing the economic story over the human one, and much more. He extends all of these things to likely outcomes, and it's quite plausible, and also alarming. But he uses creative storytelling to provide a way to take all this in, and includes brief segments from the viewpoint of Raven, giving an overview of history in a sense.  

There are many philosophical asides, which simultaneously are the point of the book and slow down the narrative. There is much Indigenous wisdom shared, in a natural way, during these asides. But the thing that most niggled for me was the role of Lenore and Katherine - their stories are dramatic and could have been explored much more deeply, but it's the men who get the guidance and insight here.The women are more valued for their ability to give life.  I'd hope that dynamic would have changed by 2084. There's also George's last case in which begins to think he should no longer punish people and take part of their lives away as a prosecutor - the circumstances of this crisis of faith didn't sit well with me at all. 

Still, this was a fresh take on a likely future if we keep going the way we are -- he points out that leadership is lacking politically in our world, that chasing the economy is destroying the earth and our relationship with it -- all quite resonant today. The story didn't so much build a world as explore our current world from a wider vantage point. The focus was on these characters and their existential journeys. It was intriguing, and a good addition to the world of  "Cli-Fi". He was ahead of his time in tackling this!