This book is one of the readings at North Island Distance Education School in British Columbia, Canada, for English First Peoples 12. It reads like a young adult novel, which is not surprising since David A. Robertson won his accolades for children’s writing and graphic novels—twice he won the Governor General’s Literary Award, also the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award, and the Writer’s Union of Canada Freedom to Read award. Published in 2022, this is his first adult novel.
I found his writing detailed, repetitive, and slow-paced (he did this, she did that). He tells more than he shows, and it lacks the edgy, lyrical style I’ve come to appreciate in books by other Indigenous authors like Cherie Dimaline, Eden Robinson, Louise Erdrich, and Drew Hayden Taylor, though it is honest and does reveal his feelings and experiences.
Forty-year-old Matthew feels empty and estranged from his wife and sixteen-year-old daughter. He suffers with anxiety and is weaning himself off a longtime Xanax addiction. To fill the void, he sends some flirty texts to a co-worker—that’s it, no sex, just flirty texts. His daughter Holly (birth name Hallelujah) who suffers with anxiety and teenage angst, discovers his texts and calls him on it.
“And if you want me to stop drinking this much, then I’ll make you a deal: how abut you stop texting some bitch that isn’t my mother!”
The story is divided into two parts. Part One details the problems plaguing this Winnipeg inner city family of Cree-Scottish heritage and goes on a little too long for this reader. It takes a family tragedy to shock them into action. Matthew realizes he must go back to the land where his father grew up on the old family trapline, and Holly realizes she must come along.
Robertson is a member of Norway House Cree Nation, and he drew inspiration from his own life for this novel. It reads like a fictionalized account of his memoir, Black Water, where he writes about a trip to Norway House to deal with his own mental health issues, specifically anxiety. Robertson went accompanied by his Cree father, who like Charlie McIvor in the story, is a minister. In The Theory of Crows, Robertson changes the focus to reflect estranged relationships within his own family, especially his eldest daughter.
Part Two (Chapter 17) ramps up into a survival story and that’s where the action begins. The writing style becomes more poetic too.
“They flew through the clearing (the crows) like shards of night fallen to earth, then landed on trees.”
I’d personally liked to have seen the first half condensed and the second half expanded. Most of us understand the estrangement between fathers and teenaged daughters but wilderness camping is more elusive. Norway House lies five hundred miles north of Winnipeg and was a Hudson’s Bay Company depot in the 19th Century. Matthew and Holly, both who’ve been raised in Winnipeg and have few outdoor skills, aren’t prepared or equipped to deal, which ups the stakes. Fortunately, Holly is a water-polo champion, something that saves these inexperienced city folks, when Matthew takes a canoe out on the river and makes a wrong turn. Mosquitoes and black flies are mentioned but I had to imagine what it was really like from my own experiences in Northern Ontario.
The story is split between their points-of-view. Unable to speak to his daughter, but desperate to let her know how much he cares, Matthew writes a series of letters to Holly which reveal his backstory and are woven throughout the text.
Several themes reverberate through the story: identity and belonging; the legacy of residential schools; the impact of Christianity; self harm; intergenerational trauma; Indigenous girls at risk; blood memory; and especially connection to the land.
The book has a wonderful cover and title: The Theory of Crows, but it’s not until the very end that we’re given a glimpse into that theory.
“Your moshom, he told me about this. He told me that you remembered the land, even if you’d never been on the land before. Your grandfather used to say that the land could remember you. It works the same way with crows, Hallelujah. They remembered him, they would remember me, and they remember you. They pass these things down through the generations.”
Destined to become a Canadian literary classic, Finding Flora chronicles the bittersweet journey of twenty-four-year-old, red-haired, Scottish immigrant, Flora Craigie. Readers can’t help but root for this young, feisty hero whose first act of rebellion is to leap into the darkness from a moving train to escape her new, sick, predatory husband.
“Bracing herself against the jerk and pitch of the train, Flora leaped into the darkness” (3).
Hoodwinked by Hector Mackle, an unscrupulous land agent with the CPR, Flora marries in Scotland, only to discover his wicked nature four weeks later when he tries to strangle her for refusing his advances. Mackle’s been too sick to consummate the marriage, which is a blessing, as Flora learns when she lands in Alberta.
“The symptoms you’re describing sound like syphilis,” Nurse Godwin reveals. Wicked indeed.
This is a hero’s journey where allies and enemies appear at unprecedented times. A kind of feminist Gothic novel, it’s a tale of women helping women facing adversity. Besides confrontations with entitled men of power and privilege, the women struggle against the Canadian Prairie—as brutal an antagonist as the depraved husband who offers a reward for his wayward wife. She is, after all, legally his.
This plucky heroine continues to attract angels—her homesteading female neighbours—in what becomes known as “Ladysville”. At a time when women are deemed inferior and cannot vote (1905-1907) these rebellious women face the ire of the male-dominated community because they refuse to marry or stay silent. Allowed to homestead because the men assume they’ll fail, they face male ire when they make a success of their homesteads during the allotted two-year time frame. How? By helping each other through all the Prairie hurls at them—freezing winters, malevolent hail, sickness, politics, laws, even thugs intent on burning them out.
“Ignorance is fatal, especially out here” (150).
These are wonderfully realistic characters. Among them are a Welsh widow who’s immigrated with her children, so her son can escape the coal mine that killed his father; The Chicken Ladies, a couple of Boston teachers who’ve come to Canada to escape persecution when rumours circulate that they’re more than friends; and Jessie McDonald, a fiercely independent Métis woman who hunts and trains wild horses rather than put plough to land.
Finding Flora is an homage to all homesteaders, those brave souls who laid the foundation for the Western Canada that we know and love today.” —Eleanor Florence
Florence, who grew up in Saskatchewan, has Scottish-Cree heritage and is a member of the Métis Nation of British Columbia. She dedicates this book to her Métis great-grandmother, whose name, not so coincidentally, was Jessie McDonald. The story is one of adoration, and we find our ancestors in these resilient, fighting women who refuse to back down. Whether attacking the sod to plant a garden, chinking the log cabin bare-handed with horse manure and mud, plucking wild oat seed before spreading the precious wheat, or any other of her daily Herculean tasks, Flora finds herself persevering and falling in love with this land.
Woven among the fictional characters are well-described historical characters: Irene Parlby, Alberta women’s rights activist; larger than life figure CPR president William Van Horne, and Alix Westhead, a rich, powerful woman for whom the village of Alix, Alberta was named, and whom Van Horne allegedly had a dalliance with.
Frank Oliver of Edmonton, who served as the federal Minister of the Interior, makes a damnable villain—especially with his frat boy comments: “I jollied her along because she’s such a juicy little tart, with that mane of red hair. Some man will be lucky to get a piece of that” (281.) Ah, just what a woman wants to hear when she’s eavesdropping. It’s Oliver who pushes to expropriate all of Ladysville, and harasses Flora via his agent, Mr. Payne (the perfect name for this villain.) Several real life minor characters also pepper the pages, giving a sense of reality to the homesteaders’ plight. This is history as you’ve never read it.
But don’t despair, this is a feminist tale and there’s power in sisterhood. And for those of you who crave romance, there’s a hint of that too.
Florence is a brilliant writer, the story superbly structured—she plotted the whole thing before filling in the details—the pacing relentless, the drama so thick it will tie you in knots. Yet, it’s so well written, it flows quickly and easily. Her lyrical prose describes the Prairie, both its gifts and its scourges, with imagery so vivid and cinematic we can’t help but wish for Finding Flora to become a film or CBC special. Finding Flora is as much a tribute to the Canadian Prairie as Anne of Green Gables is to P.E.I.
The book is incredibly well-researched—Florence includes a two-page bibliography and a Reading Group Guide for book clubs. She read some sixty books about homesteading in Canada before beginning to write. Perhaps, this practice grew from her earlier career in journalism. Florence worked for newspapers from Manitoba to British Columbia and even published her own award-winning community paper. She also spent eight years writing for Reader’s Digest Canada. Bird’s Eye View, her first novel, was a national bestseller, and Wildwood, her second, was featured in Kobo’s “100 Most Popular Canadian Books of All Time.” This is a woman to watch, this book a pearl of perfection.
Elinor Florence was overjoyed when Finding Flora debuted on the national bestseller list for Canadian Fiction in the number one spot and remained on the national bestseller list for thirty weeks plus during 2025. It’s also a Heather’s Pick for the Indigo, Chapters, and Coles book chain and was recently named one of Indigo’s Top Ten Best Books of 2025.
Cold is a brilliant example of Indigenous literary fiction. A powerful storyteller, award-winning playwright, columnist, filmmaker, and lecturer, Drew Hayden Taylor infuses this mythical mystery with nuggets of knowledge, literary allusions, and humour (black and otherwise). He began his career as a standup comic. A handful of diverse characters, unknown to each other, combine to track and kill an unbelievable enemy that touches all their lives in Canada’s biggest city. Toronto.
“The profound lesson here is that even in the coldest, most desolate landscapes of our existence, it is these very connections that can keep our spirits warm and guide us through the storms.”
I met Taylor in the early 1990s at Trent University in Peterborough when he was publicizing his two one act plays for youth: Toronto at Dreamer’s Rock and Education is our Right. Taylor was born nearby at Curve Lake First Nation. Over the last thirty years, he’s won a host of awards while writing novels, plays, and documentaries, directing films, and touring the world.
The book is divided into three parts, with titles in Anishinaabemowin (and English). “The Storm Approaches” begins with the crash of a Cessna 2065 in Northern Ontario. A young Indigenous boy dies. A driven Caribbean journalist, Fabiola Halan, suffers a compound fracture in her right leg, and the pilot, an Anishinaabe woman named Merle Thompson, leaves Fabiola alone, intent on traversing thirty kilometres of ice and snow to find help. Here, in this tragic moment we catch a glimpse of Taylor’s comic relief in Fabiola’s thoughts: “No matter the amount of pain, people whose tortured command of the English language would and usually did cause her more discomfort than a mishandled Brazilian wax and a children’s first-year violin recital combined” (13).
Next, we’re introduced to the handsome, aging, “Ojibwa hockey ninja” Paul North as he awakens from a hangover. North’s team is part of the Indigenous Hockey League, and he’s in Toronto for a tournament, perhaps his last. The inclusion of Elmore Trent, Professor of Indigenous Literature, provides Taylor with a spokesperson for Canadian Indigenous fiction. With nods to dystopian writers, Waubgeshig Rice (Moon of the Turning Leaves) and Cherie Dimaline (The Marrow Thieves), Trent muses how Indigenous writers used to lament the past but now tend to explore future dystopian worlds.
Meanwhile, Detective Ruby Birch is investigating a trail of vicious murders by a serial killer leapfrogging across the country. The question that drives the plot and plagues the reader is who, or what, is this killer? As “The Blizzard Rages” these disparate characters connect. Trent talks racial politics with the brilliant journalist, Fabiola, who survived her cold ordeal and wrote a book she’s now publicizing. When Trent and North discover they’re both connected to one of the victims, they decide to work together. After all, this killer is hunting people they know. They could be next. The twists will tie you in knots.
Taylor reveals in his acknowledgements that Cold began its life as an Indigenous horror movie called Wendigo, based on a mythical Anishinaabe nightmare creature, which evolved in the frozen north where people were starving. “It’s a spirit. It doesn’t have a body, but it has horrifying hunger, a hunger so strong it eclipses anything else… It needs a physical body so it can eat” (305). Enough said.
I highly recommend this novel. Though Cold blends genres (murder mystery, horror, and thriller) it is something unto itself—not unlike the Wendigo. Fascinating and spellbinding, it will keep you reading far into the night. Who or what is the Wendigo? And how will they stop it?
This book is subtitled: “Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.” It’s a wonderful book; one I’ll add to my library. It’s about changing attitudes, rediscovering nature, and learning gratitude. If anyone can save the planet and ameliorate this current crisis, it’s Indigenous teachings and children—coupled together this book creates a lifeline to hope.
My understanding is that Monique Gray Smith took the teachings offered in Braiding Sweetgrass (2013) by Potawatomi botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer and adapted them for Young Adults. It’s a beautifully written and produced book with gorgeous illustrations by Diné (Navajo) artist, Nicole Neidhardt.
Most of the stories originate in the East. Having grown up alongside the Great Lakes and studied with Anishinaabe Elders and teachers at Trent University, they resonate with me. I well remember the teachings of the Seven Fires. We are now in the time of the Seventh Fire. That prophecy “tells that all the people of the earth will see that the path ahead is divided. Each person must make a choice in their path to the future” (278).
Some teachings I’ve chosen to weave into my life—like planting one corn seed, one pole bean seed, and one squash seed together in my community garden plot in the way of the Haudenosaunee People. This is not only to honour my Tuscarora grandmothers, it makes sense. The corn stalk provides a trellis for the pole beans and the wide squash leaves keep the soil moist and weed free. I also found Pass the Feather, where I can order tobacco seed from a Haudenosaunee woman who says, “You are not paying for tobacco seeds or my time – this is a gift from me to you. Tobacco is not for sale and should not be bought.” You can leave Dawn a donation for her time. I love this concept. Then when I pluck from the wild, after asking the plant if I can take a part of her to use, I can leave some sacred tobacco as a gift.
passthefeather.ca
This idea of changing the way we approach nature and do business is one the author proposes. Engage in a gift exchange rather than purchase and sale. Think potlatch: give rather than take, making gratitude one of those things you give.
It seems a romantic and radical idea to change the way we’ve done business for hundreds of years, but isn’t that what’s needed. I mean, that’s how we lost our old growth trees, isn’t it? The Europeans who arrived here on Turtle Island saw only wood for their houses and ships, rather than sentient beings who’d been part of a thriving ecosystem for thousands of years.
We may not be able to change the world view completely but making gifts rather than flocking to the mall to purchase is one way to proceed. Also, we can buy locally crafted products to support our artists and creators rather than huge corporations from the other side of the world.
There are times as I read that I’m transported back home. I remember collecting maple sap in Ontario and boiling it down on my kitchen stove until it bubbled thick in the bottom of the pot and steam ran down the walls. Oh, that was wonderful syrup. And we always had a garden. I knew all the plant life around my childhood home and learned to use natural remedies. Things are different now that I live in a city on the West Coast, but I’m trying to do whatever I can. It’s not only better for the earth, it feeds and soothes my soul.
What can you do? Learn the old Indigenous ways, appreciate the plants, and show your gratitude. Perhaps buy or borrow this book for your teenagers, or if you’re a teacher, read parts of it in the classroom. Working together and sharing these ways of walking on the Mother Earth creates hope, which lessens anxiety and brings beauty to our world.
P.S. If you’ve never smelled sweetgrass, you must. It’s indescribably sweet and soothing. My grandson loves it.
I don’t know how I missed reading this book. I’ve been a huge fan of Louise Erdrich’s work since the 1980s. Love Medicine, one of my other all time favorite books won the 1984 National Book Critics Circle Award. I also loved Tracks (1988). Erdrich writes of a fictional reservation in Minnesota/North Dakota and her characters often dance between stories.
I picked up The Round House (2012) from Libby, which is where I head for audio books. Narrated by the iconic comic actor Gary Farmer, I found myself either laughing out loud or next to tears as I walked around my local lake. The story brims with emotion. In her brilliance, Erdrich chose to tell the tale through the eyes of a 13-year-old Anishinaabe boy named Joe. It’s a coming of age story set in 1988 on a reservation in North Dakota as he reminisces of a distant tragedy that touched the lives of his family and friends.
Gary Farmer, WPSU photo
Joe’s mother goes to the band office one Sunday to pick up a file after she gets a phone call, and when she doesn’t return, he and his father, a tribal judge, go looking for her in a borrowed car. They pass her. “She whizzed by us in the other lane, riveted, driving over the speed limit, anxious to get back home to us.”
They’re not alarmed until they find her still sitting in the car in front of their house, stinking of the gasoline and vomit that covers her dress. After prying her hands off the steering wheel, they take her to the local hospital where doctors confirm that Joe’s mother was raped.
In the afterword, Erdrich offers old stats from 2009, Amnesty International, “Maze of Injustice” that reveals how “1 in 3 Native women will be raped in her lifetime” and “86% are perpetrated by non-Native men.” This is no surprise, and I’m sure the figures are similar or higher today, as many women don’t report rape. Like them, Joe’s mother is too traumatized to talk, eat, or leave her bed.
Let’s face it. Rape is the oldest and most horrific crime, though its regularity has desensitized us to its devastating effects. Something that books like this seek to remedy.
But Joe will not let it go, and sets out with his buddies, Cappy, Zack, and Angus, to find out what happened, why it happened, and who is responsible. We follow the boys as they race through the reservation on their bikes, sifting through clues which lead them to The Round House, a sacred place of worship for their people and the scene of the crime.
The text is laced with humor characteristic of Indigenous literature. One of the funniest scenes occurs as the boys head to Grandma Thunder’s home for Indian tacos. They’re always starving and know she’ll cook for them. As they race along, they run through a list of all the sex words and close facsimiles they should never say in front of Grandma, a conversation that causes each boy to jump off his bike and race into a private spot in the woods for “four minutes.”
Coming from a distant WASP family, I envy these quirky characters the deep love and closeness of community that surrounds life on this fictional reservation.
The Round House won the National Book Award for Fiction (2012) and is part of Louise Erdrich’s “justice trilogy” which includes The Plague of Doves (2008) and LaRose (2016).
Birchbark Books is her Indigenous book store in Minneapolis.
Most Canadians will pick up Thomas King’s latest novel, check out the cover, and think the story involves a tragic accident on a lonely mountain highway caused by an invisible frozen glaze on pavement. Haven’t we all encountered black ice at some point on a Canadian road? But that explanation is way too simple for this King of Metaphors. Black Ice actually refers to a team of government agents whose mission was to collect corporate information but who raised the stakes by demanding scads of ill-gotten money and stashing it in a vault only one of them could access. But I get ahead of myself.
Black Ice is the eighth installment in The DreadfulWater Mysteries, a must-read satirical series set near a Blackfoot reserve in Chinook, Montana. The protagonist, Thumps DreadfulWater, is an ex-cop from Northern California—a ravenous, diabetic, Cherokee photographer who got in his car one fateful day and drove east until his fuel pump broke. His wife and daughter had been murdered, and Chinook “had simply been at the bottom of a long fall.” Due to his policing skills and a lack of trained detectives in Chinook, Thumps has been invited to assist the local law on several occasions. In Black Ice, the sheriff appoints Thumps temporary deputy sheriff when he’s forced to take a leave following his wife’s suicide. Of course, everywhere he goes, Thumps is referred to as that photographer.
King is a photographer himself. As Thumps struggles with modernity—leaving behind his basement dark room and all those killer chemicals to trudge into the digital age, I have to wonder if this is King’s personal experience. As deputy sheriff he has to carry a cell phone that makes him jump every time it vibrates.
Thumps plays straight man to an eccentric cast. The setup is reminiscent of King’s CBC radio show, The Dead Dog Café Comedy Hour (1997 to 2000.) Political satire and black humour define his style, and the Indigenous characters are fair game. Roxanne Heavy Runner is “dressed in a gunmetal-grey, shrapnel-patterned pantsuit. Her hair … held in place with a large metal clip that stuck up off the top of her head like the safety lever on a hand grenade” (129.) Her sister, Deanna Heavy Runner, and Cooley Small Elk, both do police work when they’re not playing Jenga at the station or watching the flat screen from the bed in the jail cell. The enterprising Wutty Youngbeaver surprises them all by entering the qualifying round of the U.S. Open supported by “Wutty’s Warriors” hooting him on from the sidelines in red T-shirts with gold lettering. Cisco Cruise “the ninja assassin” returns to “assist” Thumps in solving the death of a private investigator, and the disappearance of Nora Gage, the woman he’s been investigating. King says of this quirky cast: “They’re friends of mine and I don’t have a great many friends in the world. Those characters are pretty, pretty dear to me.” Fortunately for fans, he continues to create their lives.
King must be an animal lover as critters always make it into the story. Gage leaves a massive dog named Howdy at the pound when she bolts, and Thumps, in a shrewd move, rescues the beast and drops him off with the grieving sheriff—an outcome that seems to suit them both, more or less. Thumps doesn’t think Howdy will survive his cats. It’s doubtful whether the sheriff will survive Howdy.
King takes a jab at various contemporary trends from Amazon bashing to Moses Blood’s analogy on global warming: “too many gophers in the box.” His relationship with Claire suffers when she’s forced to take her daughter to Canada to access decent health care.
King can get away with this type of political commentary. A member of the Order of Canada, he’s won a string of prestigious awards for his work including: The Governor General’s Literary Award, a National Aboriginal Achievement Award, and a Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal. His book, Indians on Vacation, won the 2021 Stephen Leacock Award for Humour. Deep House, book Six in the DreadfulWater series, won the Crime Writers of Canada Whodunit Award for best traditional mystery in 2023. King wears the title, professor emeritus at the University of Guelph where he taught for many years. Oh, to have been in one of his English classes.
Really, if you’ve never read Thomas King, you must. Charmingly witty—wittingly charming, and laced with black ice that’ll keep you on your toes.
