The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline is a book I’ve been highly anticipating reading for quite some time, and I’m so glad I was able to fit it in as one of my last books of this year. Very different from my expectations, but absolutely spectacular. This book is a devastation, and a triumph. ⁣⁣
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I have mentioned before that I am easily bored by travel narratives, and this book impressed me by captivating me despite being almost in its entirety a story about traveling, really being on the run. The Marrow Thieves follows an Indigenous boy named Frenchie, in a near future where Indigenous people are captured to harvest their dreams in schools that harken back to the Residential Schools of the near past. Over a tightly paced years long journey, Frenchie and his found family of other Indigenous survivors bond and make a home together as they must stay always on the move in attempting to escape capture. Dimaline had me gripped with fear as I fell in love with her characters, and somberly contemplated the parallels between this speculative fiction novel and the real exploitation of Indigenous people and land that underlies the history of colonization of North America. ⁣⁣
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This novel is super brilliant. I’m still reeling, and looking forward to more from Dimaline.