How and why does a Cree become a “bad” Cree. Johns explains in this, her debut novel, but be forewarned. You’ll need to sit back and hold on because this story will catch you like a crow’s claw to the gut and drag you through the elements.
Bad Cree is the story of a beautiful family from northern Alberta and how they cope with life and death. It’s a story of grief, longing, love, and connection with moments so deep, dark, and visceral, one night I dream I’m trapped in a watery shed at the bottom of a black and frigid lake, and my only escape is to awaken. Can you imagine drowning in your sleep while you’re dreaming? Johns can. Still, there are other moments I feel embraced. Like I’m slipping into a soft, warm, vat of mac and cheese or enfolded into an auntie’s loving arms.
When we meet Mackenzie, she’s living in a small bachelor apartment in Vancouver and working at Whole Foods with her Two-Spirited friend, Joli. She’s been estranged from her family for years, since her kokum died. She couldn’t handle “the never-ending lonely that hung in the halls and in every corner” (76.) Then her big sister Sabrina died, and she was unable to go home for the funeral.
Now, she’s plagued by dreams where she appears dressed in whatever she happens to be wearing when she nods off. And she’s bringing things back. First, a spruce branch she’s ripped from a tree, and then a bloody crow’s head. Crows are following her through Vancouver alleys and beaches. Are they allies or enemies? She ignores all of these messages until she starts getting texts from her dead sister. “You know who this is. You’re not listening.” Does that give you chills? It’s only the beginning.
Just when things have reached their desperate peak, Auntie Verna calls and Mack confesses everything. “Am I a bad Cree?” Mack asks. “I think you need to come home” (80) Auntie replies. The two-thirds of the story that follow immerses us in Cree life and tradition in a home filled with aunts and uncles, love and laughter, vats of comfort food, crib and poker, an array of cousins, and of course, Mack’s mom and dad. They live in High Prairie, where Johns grew up. Here they live in relationship with the land and the ancestors, with their dreams and memories.
But what about Sabrina? On one level this is a mystery where Mackenzie, her sister Tracey, and her cousin Kassidy try everything imaginable to discover what happened to Sabrina. Be forewarned: There is a creature, a monster born of greed, and the climax reads like a Stephen King horror story.
Johns says this is a story of generational trauma and magic. Kokum (Mack’s grandmother) was stolen away to residential school, as was Mack’s mother and aunties. This healing from the violence inflicted on them is a burden foisted upon Indigenous families. But there’s also magic afoot here. Johns wants people to know that Indigenous People are more than just their trauma. And there are other big themes. References to the extractive industry and the devastation left behind from oil drilling create ecological grief.
Reading Bad Cree, I’m reminded of Métis-writer Cherie Dimaline’s Emperor of Wild, Maggie Stiefvater’s Dreamer Trilogy, and Eden Robinson’sTrickster Series. In fact, Johns attended Banff Centre in 2019 for a writing residency, where Robinson was one of the instructors. Robinson read an earlier version of Bad Cree (which began its life as a short story) and told Johns to “go deeper and go darker.” This, she has done. The text is stippled with Cree words that mean more than can be explained in simple English. It’s a story teens will devour and adults remember. Johns says she wrote it because there was nothing like this for her to read when she was younger. It’s brilliant—a riveting peek into Cree life and culture that rides the genres of horror and coming of age stories.
Jessica Johns is a queer Cree auntie from Sucker Creek First Nation in Treaty 8 territory in Northern Alberta. Bad Cree, her debut novel, was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award, won the MacEwan Book of the Year award, and is on the 2024 CBC Canada Reads long list. It should have won more. Johns is a visual artist and published poet. She combines all her talents to create a lyrical voice that will pluck you from your easy chair and take you on a journey. Don’t make the mistake of calling it fantasy. It’s not.
As some of you know, I’ve embarked on my writing retreat in Greece. I left Vancouver yesterday (Tuesday) at 6:30am in my first Uber, feeling excited and hopeful. A day later, I’m sitting in a Starbucks at Zurich Airport with free wifi and using my Euro plug. But I still haven’t made it to Greece. I really need to write this all down just to expunge it from my tired, battered brain so I can move on. Literally. If I count, I’ve been out here “traveling” for almost 24 hours, carrying all my gear, and wearing the same clothes.
Monday night, I made the mistake of checking the AC app (I think you all know who AC refers to, Canadian friends. Threatened pilot strike. blah blah blah.) The app announced that my Tuesday morning flight to Toronto with connection to Athens was delayed 1 hour 10 minutes.
I lay there all night, stress hormones literally percolating in my body, trying to decide if I should change my flight because I knew we were cutting that connecting flight really close. I had time I had 30 minutes to run between gates. My travel partner was joining me in Toronto and we were setting off on our Athens flight together. Around 2:30am, I discovered there was a 6am flight. I phoned the AC 24/7 lines five or six times and was told by the pleasant recorded male voice that there was a high level of calls and to be prepared for a three-hour wait time. I still haven’t been able to get through. I knew I wasn’t going to sleep all night so thought why not go out to the airport now and try to get a seat on that flight?
Then I thought, “No, you’ll be fine.”
That’s where I made my second mistake. I should have listened to my intuition.
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The Athens flight, along with my partner, departed at 6pm (10 MINUTES EARLY.) Our Vancouver flight left later than predicted. The delay was apparently a mechanical thing. Then, one of the flight attendants was late and we all had to wait for him to arrive and board. Ironically, the best thing on that flight was the kind AC pilot sitting beside me. He helped me unravel the trickier bits of seat trays, overhead bins, and hidden screens. I thanked him and said, “You must wonder how I get through life.” He just smiled. He really was a great guy.
I was first off and raced through Terminal 1 because, you know, I had to try. I found the gate at 6:20pm. I was told that, “Nope. That plane has gone.” In the meantime, AC had rebooked me on a flight Toronto – Zurich – Athens. In theory, this was a decent plan. At boarding time, we, The 300, herded in the loading zones, but there was no plane on the tarmac. It had been in for maintenance that day and wasn’t back yet. About 30 minutes later, the plane appeared and they loaded the people who need extra help. The herd remained jostling anxiously. I wasn’t the only one with connections. About 30 minutes after that, the people who needed extra help came back off the plane and joined us. What? They were doing tests on the plane. Eventually, we all got on and took our seats, and sat there . . . and sat there.
At one point, the whole plane shut down and people stopped boarding. Here are some texts to my friend in Vancouver:
So all the power shut down in the friggin plane and we’re all sitting here in stunned silence.
It’s terrifying and they’re not telling us anything.
The lights are going to black. We’re on emergency power.
What was I thinking? Should I get off and get a hotel? What if this happens while we’re up in the air? I actually texted Tara: “I love you guys.”
When we grabbed the flight attendant, she said it was “just a routine system reboot and it’s 100% now.” She said, she’d made an announcement. Hello, the sound system wasn’t working.
We sat there in scary mode so long, one family with young kids decided to leave the plane. I understood. I was on the cusp of bailing myself when the captain came on to reassure us that everything was just fine. The new problem was the family’s luggage was packed in the hold with the other 300 suitcases. So, we sat there another 45 – 60 minutes while the ground crew rifled through the bags to give them their luggage and the mechanics tried to repair the inflight entertainment system. They were unsuccessful but it took two hours of trying. “It’s for the passengers, you know.”
Eventually, we left. Two hours late. Meaning, I lost my Athens connection in Zurich.
Then, we had a medical emergency somewhere over the ocean. The flight attendants canceled breakfast for everyone but business class because they love business class and they were too busy. Nope, they couldn’t even serve coffee—the coffee maker was broken or something . . . When we finally landed, we were told not to move because the paramedics had to come through to pick up the person. No problem. I’m no longer in a hurray.
So, there you have it. It’s Wednesday afternoon Zurich time and I’m hunkered down in this clean modern airport with a beautiful view of Swiss trees, tarmac, and planes. I have a dinner voucher worth 31 Swiss Franks (something like $50CA.) It’s raining, but I’m on the ground and I’m safe. I have a boarding pass that says I have a 7pm flight to Athens and I’ll arrive around 10:30 tonight and join my travel partner in the hotel. I haven’t slept yet and I really need a shower. But as always, I remained calm throughout. Well, mostly.
This is my first trip in seven years. Hmmmm . . . I know these are first world problems, but SSHHIIITTTT!
Find me at Port Moody Library Author’s Fair this Saturday June 15th from 1:00 – 3:00 pm. I’ll be reading in the Fireside Lounge around 2:30pm. Please come by and say hello! It’s good to be back home!
Joanna Vander Vlugt believes that all books should be works of art. She’s got a leg up there, being an artist-illustrator as well as a fine writer. Her sketch of protagonist, motorcycle-riding lawyer, Jade Thyme, blasts off the page carried by the energy of the craft.
Spy Girls, book three in the Jade and Sage Thriller series, is a rollicking and relentless legal thriller that answers the question: Can justice really prevail? The plot begins when millionaire Chief Justice Chimera—a revolting toad who sexually harasses and abuses young women who have the bad fortune to end up in his courtroom AND who is destined to become Canada’s next Prime Minister—is found murdered in his hot tub. Is this poetic justice? The work of a vigilante? The problem is: Sage Thyme’s girlfriend was the last person seen in the hot tub with Chimera, and now she’s missing, off her medication, and a person of interest along with Chimera’s wife, Anya, herself a pastry-chef and Russian ex-double-agent. Complicated? That’s not the half of it.
A high-voltage spy thriller, fueled by insidious twists, deceptive characters, and high-stakes action, Spy Girls is played out at intimate settings in Victoria, B.C. and the Downtown East Side in Vancouver.
Things I liked about this book: Slick dialogue and intimate details, like a box of gold-plated teeth from a murdered preacher, that show up here and there as clues. The play on names. A chimera is a devilish, mythological creature formed from parts of various animals; for example, a goat and serpent. Fitting? Indeed. Katriona Kalocsay, the snazzy, psychopathic, Hungarian villain who uses pliers to deal out her own brand of justice (teeth and nails. Yikes!) The formatting: the book comes complete with a Table of Contents divided into four parts. Each chapter highlights a cheeky quotation to rev up the reader and catchy chapter heads.
Vancouver Island writer, Joanna Vander Vlugt has a unique writing style and experiments with fresh ways to use basic literary terms. Gems like “my caterpillar confidence” and “an onion of nerves” catch the reader’s eye. She does something interesting with verbs, adding “ing” in surprising places—“Adam marched in, slamming him against the inside wall,” and “Adam shouted, dropping Jan to the floor”—that complements the action.
Though Spy Girls is the third instalment in the series, this novel can be read alone. There are enough mentions of backstory to piece together the intimate web that connects the characters, be they ex-CIA spies and their handlers; fathers and daughters; sisters, lovers, and friends. The first two novels, The Unravelling and Dealer’s Child, were Canadian Book Club Awards finalists. Joanna worked in the prosecutor’s office for thirteen years and spent another ten working in the Office of the Police Complaint Commissioner, so has plenty of fodder for her novels. She is also a wonderful interviewer and editor of SAM Magazine. Her motorcycle illustrations have been purchased world-wide, and her Woman Empowered motorcycle art series has been featured in on-line art and motorcycle magazines.
Reading Spy Girls is like running a marathon. It will leave you breathless, yet satisfied.
There’s an ongoing argument among writers about what makes a novel literary rather than genre. This novel, which I picked up in one of my neighbourhood little libraries, solved it for me.
It’s in the voice.
Voice is how an author writes—what they choose to say and how they choose to say it. Voice is the one quality that can slow down my reading because I want to wallow in it, rather than race to find out what happens next.
Sointula is an older novel, going on twenty years, but I don’t feel it’s dated in the least. Vancouver Island and its wild places are still here echoing in the mist. Sointula, for those of you who’ve never heard of it, is a seaside town on Malcolm Island (just off the northeast coast of Vancouver Island). It’s built on the unceded Kwakwakw’akw Territory of the ‘Namgis, Mamalilikala, and Kwakuitl Nations. Sointula was created by a group of Finnish settlers in 1901 as their Utopia.
Bill Gaston weaves his awareness of the island through the experiences of Tom, a rough-edged, damaged, young man who’s there recovering from a near-wack by a Vietnamese gang. Something to do with drugs. Tom is living alone on the beach, observing and counting orcas. He’s also involved in getting drugs into B.C. — something about hearing boats on his orca sonar and building a big old bonfire when the coast is literally clear for the drug boats to come through.
Tom’s life story is described in wistful detail through his mother’s memories.
Evelyn has left her privileged life as the wife of the Mayor of Oakville, Ontario to join her dying ex in Victoria, B.C. After Claude’s passing, she puts his ashes into a glass vile, steals a double kayak, and heads north on her own. Evelyn has no money, no food, no clothes other than the ones she came with. She hasn’t seen her son Tom in a decade but she needs to now. She needs to tell him about his father’s death.
En route, Evelyn meets Peter Gore, whose gall bladder is literally killing him. Still, he joins Evelyn in her stolen kayak with his rum and his desire to write a book. Over many pages, Peter falls in love with Eve and with life.
All three characters are flawed. It would be hard to even sympathize with them if it weren’t for the elegant backstories Gaston weaves throughout this masterful story. I see myself in Evelyn’s estrangement from her grown son and her desperation to find peace in the wild hollows. I love her outlaw spirit. Sointula means “place of harmony” and in all the chaos of travel, sickness, grime, and starvation—traveling without funds is not clean nor romantic—it seems that harmony prevails. Even Love.
Reading Sointula was almost enough to make me get in the car and drive north two hours to Port McNeill. From there it’s only a short ferry ride to Malcolm Island. The land itself plays a character in this story and the tale borders on travel writing.
It was enough to make me look for more Gaston books and take a deep dive into Can Lit.
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