I actually finished reading this book a couple of weeks ago. And I took my time reading it. And rereading. I savoured each page and backtracked to sections, not because I'd forgotten what happened but because I wanted to see each passage from a different angle. The book is a thoughtful one and sk...
My life as a Kane was lit in the Indigos, Aquamarines and Magentas of a home built on quiet faith and prayer. But Johnny changed all that. Where I had stood transfixed by the gloss on the surface of living, he called me forward from the pages of the books, away from the blinders that faith can ...
When Garnet Raven was three years old, he was taken from his home on an Ojibway Indian reserve and placed in a series of foster homes. Having reached his mid-teens, he escapes at the first available opportunity, only to find himself cast adrift on the streets of the big city. Having skirted the ...
Celebrated Ojibway author Richard Wagamese shares the traditions and teachings of his people, entwining them with an account of his own life-long struggle for self-knowledge and self-respect. Richard Wagamese stares the modern world in the eye and takes careful note of its snares and perils. He ...
Rodeo cowboy Joe Willie Wolfchild, riding an explosive bull called See Four and moments away from becoming World Champion, suffers a devastating accident. His parents and grandparents use all their native wisdom to ease him out of his subsequent bitter depression, but without success. Meanwhile, ...
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and not even a hint of a breeze. It was warm. The whole day smelled like roses. If there were such a thing as an omen, then I guess the day breaking open like that was it for me. I called Ashton, and we arranged to meet at the coffee shop and then go for breakfast....
. . THE MOON on the water is a pale eye. It hangs suspended, like a dream upon awakening. The lake bears it effortlessly, and the scrim of trees along the skyline thrust up like fingers to tickle its belly. You’d swear you can hear the chuckle of it against the morning adagio of shorebirds. My pe...
She was tiny. She felt like air in my hands. Amy arranged pillows behind her head. I found the kitchen and returned with a glass of water and a cold cloth. The old lady still hadn’t stirred. Her home was what some people would call exotic. All the furniture was made of woo...
There was mist rising off the creek and when he roused he startled a deer come to drink at the far shore. The sky was a dim grey cut with a pale blue. The day would be warm. The stones he’d fallen asleep on had stiffened his back and it took long minutes of stretching to work the kinks out. He wa...
Before the nuns, before the priests, before the cooks even got to the kitchen to start the oatmeal mush and dry toast that was our regular breakfast. I needed no alarm clock. I’d just wake and dress carefully in the dimness and creep downstairs in my stocking feet to the back door, where I kept m...
In Ojibway it means “first light.” It refers to that moment when the edge of the visible sky becomes tinted a hard electric blue. A blue that has never been adequately represented in art or even in words, but one that anyone who has been awake at the birth of a day remembers forever. It’s a blue ...
Born Again Indian Born Again Indian each morning he lights the sacred medicines in the abalone bowl and walks every inch of his home with blessings and prayers for peace and prosperity health and well-being and with gratitude for everything that already is he eases the sacred smoke over e...