I save a *lot* of titles on Scribd (will I ever start calling it Everand? TBD) and honestly sometimes feel like I’ll never make it through my saved list. That’s where the beauty of audiobook roulette lies, as I ask my partner to choose a random number and listen to whatever corresponds from my Scribd audiobook list. Last week this led me to The Narrows of Fear (Wapawikoscikanik) by Cree author Carol Rose Goldeneagle.

This book is told through a series of short chapters, focusing on a fairly wide cast of First Nations characters. It’s a testimony to the strength of women, the importance of cherishing and upholding tradition and reconnecting with your culture. The author was part of the ‘sixties scoop’, and so was forcibly removed from her Indigenous culture, adopted out into a white family without her mother’s permission. This devastating loss of cultural contact is a major theme of The Narrows of Fear, as we see Sandy reconnect with her birth family and culture.

Another major theme is resilience, as the characters battle a myriad of issues stemming from colonialism. Characters struggle with unspeakable trauma at the hands of nuns and priests at residential schools. Women suffer domestic abuse at the hands of partners. Girls are raped by men abusing positions of power and authority. Children are neglected. Cycles of addiction are broken and repeated, abuse rearing its ugly head again and again, as the abused become the abusers. John Wayne’s various storylines had me sick to my stomach, please be conscious of the trigger warnings if you’re going to try this book. Goldeneagle really ran with the saying ‘hurt people hurt people’ here.

But there were also some beautifully uplifting moments amidst the challenging ones. There’s a two-spirit character whose storyline was wonderful, and I loved the relationships between all the women of this book. They create a wonderful support system, pushing back against some men’s ideas (cough John Wayne cough) that women shouldn’t participate in ceremonies, that they’re somehow impure. I was also a big fan of the spiritual elements woven into the story. 

My biggest issue with this book was that sometimes it said too much explicitly. Like there’d be a lovely moment between two characters, and then there’d be a line that read: ‘It was a very tender moment.’ I already knew that because the author showed me, but her then telling us drew me out of the moment and made it seem a tad overwrought. 

Overall, a difficult read but one with plenty of hope.