Book Buzz

MAGGIE SIGGINS

BITTER is a powerful account of what has happened to the people in and around Pigeon Lake over the past 200 years. For over two hundred years, Pelican Narrows has endured an equally torturous relationship with the encroaching European culture, from the Hudson’s Bay Company factors and missionaries of earlier times to the bureaucrats and police of today. Siggins used oral history and documented the personal stories of contemporary Pelican Narrows Rock Cree. She gives us the human faces behind the newspaper stories of native issues. Bitter Embrace is an extraordinary contribution to our history and our understanding of ourselves and what our First Nations Communities have under gone and have to deal with now.

It is a difficult read but should be read by all Canadians and read and discussed by all high school students in Canada.

RICHARD WAGAMESE

This is a grand book on the meaning of love, friendship and community. The main characters of this novel are street people. Four homeless friends who start going to the movies as a way of staying warm in the freezing Canadian winter. However they find they love movies and continue going even when the weather warms. They make a friend with a man that they meet at the movies. Their stories of what took them down to the level of living on the streets are gradually revealed. Well worth the read.

DOUG CUTHAND

A must read for people interested in first nations culture, especially first nations culture around the Battleford’s. Cuthand has an interesting mix of history, culture, profiles of influential people and commentary. The chapter History As We See It is enlightening because of course history is written by the dominant culture (the victors). At 115 pages it is a very quick read.

DAVID BERGEN

A  fasinating mix of stories, this novel is about the clash of generations — and cultures with a strong dose of racism in the mix.

In 1973, Raymond Seymour, an eighteen-year-old Ojibway boy, is taken by a local police officer to a remote island and left to die. His crime? Fishing for white girls.

A year later, the Byrd family arrives in Kenora. They have come to stay at “the Retreat,” a commune run by the self-styled guru Doctor Amos. Lizzy, the eldest of the Byrd children, cares for her younger brothers Fish and William. When Lizzy meets Raymond, her world changes expands exponentially. Lizzy comes to understand the real difference between Raymond’s world and her own. A tragedy and a love story, the novel is quite haunting.

Set during the summer of the Ojibway occupation of Anicinabe Park in Kenora, The Retreat tells the story of the complicated love between a white girl and a native boy, and of a family on the verge of splintering forever. It is also a story of the bond between two brothers who were separated in childhood, and whose lives and fates intertwine ten years later.

A must read.

JOSEPH BOYDEN

Set in the forest around James Bay, the protagonists are the children and grandchildren of Three Day Road’s war heroes. Will Bird flees to a remote island after shooting a Cree crime boss and drug dealer who was trying to kill him.

Another story line, Bird’s niece Annie is seeking her sister Suzanne, who’s disappeared into the fashion world’s underground in New York.

The story flipped back and forth between time lines and story lines with such frequency it was difficult to keep it all straight. But it was still worth the read.