Description
Author Richard Wagamese is named the 2013 Burt Award recipient for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature for his YA novel, Indian Horse. Saul Indian Horse has hit bottom. His last binge almost killed him, and now he's a reluctant resident in a treatment centre for alcoholics, surrounded by people he's sure will never understand him. But Saul wants peace, and he grudgingly comes to see that he'll find it only through telling his story. With him, readers embark on a journey back through the life he's led as a northern Ojibwe, with all its joys and sorrows. With compassion and insight, author Richard Wagamese traces through his fictional characters the decline of a culture and a cultural way. For Saul, taken forcibly from the land and his family when he's sent to residential school, salvation comes for a while through his incredible gifts as a hockey player. But in the harsh realities of 1960s Canada, he battles obdurate racism and the spirit-destroying effects of cultural alienation and displacement. Indian Horse unfolds against the loveliness of northern Ontario, all rock, marsh, bog and cedar. Wagamese writes with a spare beauty, penetrating the heart of a remarkable Ojibwe man. First Nation Communities Read 2013-2014 Short List. First Nation Communities Read is pleased to announce that Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese is its 10th anniversary community reading selection. Author commentary: http://www.teachingbooks.net/book_reading.cgi?id=9532&a=1