A brand new book, this book club pick is now festooned with awards of all kinds: Canada Reads longlist, Giller longlist, Amazon Canada First Novel shortlist, Governor General finalist, Indigenous Voices Awards Winner, and Indigo Best Book award. Needless to say, its a very popular book this year! 

It is a very well-written book, with beautiful prose, but for reasons that I think might just have been “wrong (mental) place, wrong time”, I wasn’t blown away. I had hoped the discussion at book club would ameliorate my feelings, but for all that I agreed with everything said in support of the book, and the lessons we learned, and how the book shows how hard it is to succeed when everything is stacked against a person, my feelings didn’t change. 

The book is a coming-of-age novel for Eddie Toma, a Syilx boy growing up in the 1950s on an Indigenous reserve outside Vernon. From being a small boy to teenager, we see life through Eddie’s eyes. As a child, his family moves through the US as pickers, but as he becomes school-aged, they settle back down so he can be sent to the white school, which his mum is determined will help him succeed in life. However, one thing after another besets the family, always keeping Eddie, his mum, and others in the lurch.

One thing I wish I had seen more of in the book was Eddie’s relationship with his grandmother. The cover suggests that he finds solace with his grandmother, but I didn’t pick up on that reading the book. Aside from that, his mother is loving, and appears to be a tireless advocate for herself and her family. She’s got vision, and a plan, and even from Eddie’s perspective that’s clear.

One thing I struggled with was connecting with the characters. They seemed so distant from Eddie, which may have been by design, but I struggled to connect with Eddie too, so while I recognized the emotion of the book, but wasn’t personally impacted by it, unlike with Five Little Indians. But that being said, I was unique in my book club in those feelings. So if it appealed to you before, don’t let me stop you!