Historical Fiction

Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show is a flamboyant epic, constructed as a series of tableaux, about the struggles of the Métis in the Canadian West. It is a multilayered and entertaining saga with a rodeo vibe, loosely based on Buffalo Bill’s legendary outdoor travelling show. In 1885, following the hanging of his friend Louis Riel, bison hunter Gabriel Dumont fled to the United States. There he was recruited by the legendary Buffalo Bill, founder of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, a gigantic outdoor travelling show that re-enacted life in the American West. It made a huge impression on Dumont, and he dreamed of putting together a similar show to tell the story of the struggle of Canada’s Métis to reclaim their rights.

The creative team behind Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show – including ten authors, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, French- and English-speaking men and women – brings Dumont’s dream to life in a captivating, joyously anachronistic saga. The theatrical version of Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show presented by the National Arts Centre was one of a number of exceptional projects funded through the Canada Council for the Arts’ New Chapter initiative. (Adapted from nac-cna.ca/en/wildwestshow).

This is a bilingual book, co-published with Éditions Prise de parole, and enhanced with a historical background, a chronology of the Métis Resistances, and visual documents.

Reviews
“Really excellent. I laughed till I cried!” —Marilou Lamontagne, ICI Radio-Canada Ottawa-Gatineau

“[A] play that pleases, puzzles, and provokes, in a form that keeps shifting wildly from one moment to the next like a bucking bronco.”—J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe and Mail

“If Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show is so successful, while being funny and sad at the same time, it’s because the creative team did its research and listened to the communities involved in the rehabilitating of the figure of Gabriel Dumont. What takes shape here is a wave of madness and a rewriting of our national narrative.”—Maud Cucchi, JEU Revue de théâtre

“Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show is a crazed, fast-paced Métis 101 history lesson, in which acidity and humour deliver the story.”—Martin Vanasse, Radio-Canada

“[A] seamlessly cohesive narrative ... a zany form ... a phantasmagorical piece of pure entertainment ... a delirious blend of historical drama, musical, burlesque cabaret, hockey night, and TV quiz!”—Pierre-Alexandre Buisson

“Between bursts of laughter (of the uneasy sort at times) and moments of lively emotion, Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show takes [us] on a journey up hill and down dale through the history of the Métis Resistances and tells an oft-forgotten part of our collective history.” - Valérie Lessard, Le Droit

Additional Information
304 pages | 5.40" x 8.50" | Paperback

Louise Erdrich meets Karen Russell in this deliciously strange and daringly original novel from Pulitzer Prize finalist Margaret Verble: set in 1926 Nashville, it follows a death-defying young Cherokee horse-diver who, with her companions from the Glendale Park Zoo, must get to the bottom of a mystery that spans centuries.

Two Feathers, a young Cherokee horse-diver on loan to Glendale Park Zoo from a Wild West show, is determined to find her own way in the world. Two’s closest friend at Glendale is Hank Crawford, who loves horses almost as much as she does. He is part of a high-achieving, land-owning Black family. Neither Two nor Hank fit easily into the highly segregated society of 1920s Nashville.

When disaster strikes during one of Two’s shows, strange things start to happen at the park. Vestiges of the ancient past begin to surface, apparitions appear, and then the hippo falls mysteriously ill. At the same time, Two dodges her unsettling, lurking admirer and bonds with Clive, Glendale’s zookeeper and a World War I veteran, who is haunted—literally—by horrific memories of war. To get to the bottom of it, an eclectic cast of park performers, employees, and even the wealthy stakeholders must come together, making When Two Feathers Fell from the Sky an unforgettable and irresistible tale of exotic animals, lingering spirits, and unexpected friendship.

Reviews
"Verble beautifully weaves period details with the cast’s histories, and enthralls with the supernatural elements, which are made as real for the reader as they are for the characters. This lands perfectly."—Publishers Weekly, STARRED review

"This utterly memorable, beautifully written story will linger with readers."—Booklist, STARRED review

"An ambitious novel that’s impressive in its scope and concept: Glendale Park Zoo and the 101 are rife with narrative possibility and give the author a chance to examine a fascinating cross section of race and class."—Kirkus

“Two Feathers, tough and warmhearted, clear-eyed and funny, captivates from the first striking scene. Margaret Verble has created a remarkable world, rich with vibrant characters and layered histories, long obscured, that emerge to shape their lives in surprising, thought-provoking, and moving ways.” —Kim Edwards, bestselling author of The Memory Keeper’s Daughter and The Lake of Dreams

“Two Feathers Fell from the Sky is a rich and lively novel, steeped in place and history. Verble’s meticulous research and generosity of spirit shine through, lending her characters and their adventures a fullness that lingers.”—Kelli Jo Ford, author of Crooked Hallelujah and winner of the Plimpton Prize

Additional Information
384 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Hardcover

Wild Waters is Larry Loyie’s, Cree, exploration of the little-known side of the fur trade, the side of Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and Canadien (French Canadian) paddlers who powered the canoes. After seeing his four times great-grandfather’s name, Tomma, in Chief Trader Archibald McDonald’s 1828 journal, Larry, with partner and co-author Constance Brissenden, began researching and writing about a challenging canoe voyage from Montreal to Hudson Bay, and then on to the Pacific. Larry was determined to combine his creative vision of Tomma’s life with the entries in McDonald’s journal to honour the unacknowledged voices of history. Some of the people in Wild Waters existed; others are based on the authors’ view of the fur trade and its people. Wherever possible, real dialogue was used. Weights and measures are consistent with usage of the era.

Reviews
“Wild Waters, Inside a Voyageur's World is an authentic, atmospheric tale of the voyageur and Hudson’s Bay Company days. Not only do you admire the strength and courage of the paddlers in navigating the wild waters, but also how they negotiated the intense personalities and rivalries of the Europeans they laboured for. An excellent historical account of the voyageur’s life!” -- Darlene Adams, Curator, High Prairie & District Museum, High Prairie, AB.

Educator Information
The publisher recommends this novel for grades 6 to 12 and for Adult Education.

Additional Information
152 Pages | Paperback

How can we heal in the face of trauma? How can we transform intergenerational pain into a passion for community and healing?

Presenting herself as “Myrtle,” residential school survivor and Indigenous television personality Bevann Fox explores essential questions by recounting her life through fiction. She shares memories of an early childhood filled with love with her grandparents—until she is sent to residential school at the age of seven. Her horrific experiences of abuse there left her without a voice, timid and nervous, never sure, never trusting, affecting her romantic relationships and family bonds for years to come.

This is the story of Myrtle battling to recover her voice. Genocidal Love is a powerful confirmation of the long-lasting consequences of residential school violence —and a moving story of finding a path towards healing.

Awards

• 2021 Indigenous Voices Awards winner for Published Prose in English: Creative Nonfiction and Life-Writing

Reviews
“A riveting, often difficult, brave, important book. ” —Deanna Reder, Chair, Department of Indigenous Studies, Simon Fraser University

“A riveting and courageous reflection. . . . Genocidal Love is unique in its detailed account of the often re-traumatizing effects of the legal and bureaucratic barriers of compensation programs predating the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. ” —Jesse Rae Archibald-Barber, editor of kisiskâciwan and co-editor of Performing Turtle Island

“Fox tears beauty from the jaws of genocide, daring to claim love beyond settler imaginings—love that nurtures decolonial futures and makes possible a more just world. ”—Sam McKegney, author of Magic Weapons and Masculindians

Educator Information
A forward from Michelle Coupal explains more about "Genocidal Love—a story that Bevann tells about herself outside the boundaries of what constitutes fiction and non-fiction".

Additional Information
256 pages | 5.00" x 7.00"

Adam's Tree is a fictional account of life on the Cowesses First Nation in Saskatchewan during the 1940's and 50's. This period in history finds forces like regulatory policy, World War II, systemic racism, and the long reach of the depression defining reserve life and rural relationships. These short stories are told from the perspective of various characters on the reserve: an Indigenous teenage girl named Sophie, men who return to Cowesses after the war, struggling with untreated and unacknowledged PTSD, settlers like the local school teacher and the "Indian agent".

This book contributes to the dialogue on reconciliation, freeing Indigenous voices during a period of time that is rarely written about. It encourages readers to examine the sources and meaning of today's inheritance of complex relations.

Additional Information
220 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

Cottagers and Indians explores the politics and issues surrounding a real-life event still occurring in the Kawartha Lakes region of Central Ontario. An Indigenous man, Arthur Copper, has taken it upon himself to repopulate the nearby lakes with wild rice, known amongst the Anishnawbe as Manoomin, much to the disapproval of the local non-Indigenous cottagers, Maureen Poole in particular. She feels the plant interferes with boating, fishing, swimming, and is generally an eyesore that brings down the property values of her cottage and those of her neighbours. Drew Hayden Taylor’s thirty-second play is a powerful dramatization of contemporary confrontations taking place between environmentalism and consumerism, Indigenous and non-Indigenous sensibilities.

Reviews
"In Cottagers and Indians, an Anishnawbe man, Arthur Copper, decides to repopulate the lakes of his home Territory with manoomin, or wild rice – much to the disapproval of the local non-Indigenous cottagers, in particular the formidable Maureen Poole. Based on real-life events in Ontario’s Kawartha Lakes region, Cottagers and Indians infuses contemporary conflicts between Indigenous and non-Indigenous sensibilities with Drew Hayden Taylor’s characteristic warmth and humour." - Talon Books

Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2019-2020 resource list as being useful for grades 11 and 12 for courses in Arts Education, English Language Arts, Social Studies, and Theatre.

Additional Information
128 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

Written by a Mohawk Institute Residential School survivor, this is a fierce and candid story that reveals the heartbreaking trauma of that tragic time in our history. The author portrays how the ongoing impact of the residential schools confinements has affected Indigenous communities over several generations and has contributed to many social problems that continue to exist today. By exploring that devastating history, the author finds and celebrates the resilient and hopeful spirit that many residential school survivors, like herself, have managed to retain in the face of horror and torment.

Additional Information
160 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

Quebec author An Antane Kapesh's two books, Je suis une maudite sauvagesse (1976) and Qu'as-tu fait de mon pays? (1979), are among the foregrounding works by Indigenous women in Canada. This English translation of these works, presented alongside the revised Innu text, makes them available for the first time to a broader readership.

In I Am a Damn Savage, Antane Kapesh wrote to preserve and share her culture, experience, and knowledge, all of which, she felt, were disappearing at an alarming rate because many Elders – like herself – were aged or dying. She wanted to publicly denounce the conditions in which she and the Innu were made to live, and to address the changes she was witnessing due to land dispossession and loss of hunting territory, police brutality, and the effects of the residential school system. What Have You Done to My Country? is a fictional account by a young boy of the arrival of les Polichinelles and their subsequent assault on the land and on native language and culture.

Through these stories Antane Kapesh asserts that settler society will eventually have to take responsibility and recognize its faults, and accept that the Innu – as well as all the other nations – are not going anywhere, that they are not a problem settlers can make disappear.

Additional Information
216 pages | 5.25" x 8.00" | Translation and Afterword by Sarah Henzi

This is the story of a Metis soldier fighting for Canada on the Western Front of Europe during World War I. Vancouver 1914: a young Indigenous man named Jonathon Woodrow, desperate to prove himself as a warrior, enlists to fight in the Canadian army. Relying on his experience in hunting and wilderness survival, Private Woodrow quickly becomes one of the most feared trench raiders in the 1st Canadian Division. But as the war stretches on, with no end to the fighting in sight, Woodrow begins to realize that he will never go home again.

A 2017 finalist for the Playwright Guild of Canada’s prestigious Carol Bolt Award for Playwrights, Redpatch focuses on how First Nations soldiers and communities contributed to Canada’s involvement in the First World War.

Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2019-2020 resource list for grades 10 to 12 for Drama, English Language Arts, and Social Studies.

Contains some use of strong language.

This work is a play including an eight-page graphic novel written by Sean Harris Oliver.

Additional Information
96 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

May 1875: Mary Todd Lincoln is addicted to opiates and tried in a Chicago court on charges of insanity. Entered into evidence is Ms. Lincoln’s claim that every night a Savage Indian enters her bedroom and slashes her face and scalp. She is swiftly committed to Bellevue Place Sanitarium. Her hauntings may be a reminder that in 1862, President Lincoln ordered the hanging of thirty-eight Dakotas in the largest mass execution in United States history. No one has ever linked the two events—until now. Savage Conversations is a daring account of a former first lady and the ghosts that tormented her for the contradictions and crimes on which this nation is founded.

Reviews
"In Savage Conversations, LeAnne Howe experiments with the form of verse drama to tell the history of the Dakhóta resistance to colonization and the mythos surrounding the Lincoln presidency of that same period. The setting is the asylum to which Mary Todd Lincoln was involuntarily committed ten years after the death of her husband. The characters are the First Lady, whose racism against Native Americans is well-documented, the “Savage Indian” she claims to see and be tortured by nightly, and a rope. The story is a reckoning of hauntings and unprosecuted crimes, an attempt at imagining some way to live with an unbearable history of human rights abuses and genocide." - Kathryn Nuernberger, Kenyon Review

“In May of 1875, Mary Todd Lincoln is confined to an insane asylum. There, she is haunted by a ‘Savage Indian’ who scalps her nightly and sews her eyes open. In Howe's telling, the specter haunting the widowed First Lady is one of the thirty-eight Dakota men, hanged in 1862 by her husband in the largest mass execution in American history. In reading this, I was blown away. Unmoored. Sent spiraling adrift on gusts of wind.” —Rachel S, Harvard Book Store

“Part fever dream, part extended meditation on madness, Howe’s Savage Conversations is a bracing commentary on the nature of guilt and grief.”—Historical Novel Society

“Savage Conversations takes place somewhere in between its sources, between sanity and madness, between then and now, between the living and the dead. It pushes past the limitations of textual sources for telling indigenous history and accounts of insanity.”—Barrelhouse Reviews

“LeAnne Howe’s words are to savor, contemplate, and horrify. Savage Conversations explodes with the stench of guilt and insanity that undergirds the American story, whispered through a personal, familial, national, and supernatural drama revelatory in every sense. Howe’s uncanny images will long haunt readers, just as the Dakota 38 linger in land and memory, both offering a testament to the violent entanglements of past and present.” —Philip J. Deloria

“Savage Conversations invokes our own racial conflict and probes America’s psyche, its struggle to reconcile its colonialist values, indeed its white supremacy, with its multi-ethnic cultures and populations. . . . Through the masterly dramatic management of Mrs. Lincoln’s disturbing and chilling obsessions, Howe shows that there is no escape from the yesterday’s paradigms of power without a true reckoning with the injustices that set the stage for our troubled social landscape.”—On the Seawall

“Howe’s book powerfully contributes to our understanding and re-thinking of a moment in time that we are still grappling with today. In the wake of recent movements to remove Confederate monuments as we work to present the truths of history, Howe’s book directs our attention to a violent event that has not been adequately acknowledged. Through experimental form, Howe refracts a moment of history that readers simply cannot forget, that they will inevitably carry with them long after reading the last page.” —The Carolina Quarterly

Educator Information
Experimental verse drama.

Additional Information
144 pages | 5.00" x 7.50" 

This groundbreaking anthology from territory that is now Saskatchewan, kisiskâciwan, includes rich oral narratives from Cree, Saulteaux, Nakoda, Dakota, Dene, and Métis cultures; early writings from Cree missionaries; speeches and letters by Treaty Chiefs; stories from elders; archival discoveries; and contemporary literary works in all genres.

Historically and culturally comprehensive, voices include Big Bear, Thunderchild, Louis Riel, Gabriel Dumont, Edward Ahenakew, Maria Campbell, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Rita Bouvier, Harold Johnson, Gregory Scofield, Warren Cariou, Louise Halfe, and many more.

Educator Information
The collected works in this anthology would be useful for high school and college/university courses.  All the works in this anthology are connected to Saskatchewan in some way.  Some themes include Residential Schools, family, resilience, the Sixties Scoop, and coming of age.

Recommended resource for Grades 10-12 for these subjects: Drama, English Language Arts, Social Studies.

Caution: Some of the works in this anthology contain mature subject matter, such as discussion of abuse, violence, sexuality, etc. 

Additional Information
300 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

Authenticity Note: This work is labelled as containing Authentic Indigenous Text because of the contributions from Indigenous Peoples.

An uproariously funny and sharply inquisitive play from one of Canada’s leading Indigenous playwrights, Sir John A: Acts of a Gentrified Ojibway Rebellion explores the possibility of reconciliation between Peoples and urgently questions past and contemporary forms of Canadian colonialism. Taylor’s twenty-seventh play, Sir John A’s characters include Canada’s infamous first Prime Minister, red-nosed and pompous, full of patriarchal contempt for those “strange and perplexing Indians,” and his contemporary accusers: two Ojibway men and a soul-searching white woman. 

Bobby Rabbit, Sir John A’s irked, Anishinaabe main character, in a fit of anger and revenge, convinces his friend Hugh to accompany him on a “sojourn of justice”: to dig up Sir John A. Macdonald’s bones and hold them for ransom. Decades before, a medicine pouch belonging to Bobby’s grandfather was taken away by the staff of the residential school where he was detained. The precious object was sent to a British Museum exhibition room for conservation – and now Bobby wants it repatriated. Along the way the pair pick up Anya, a young, bright, and opinionated woman fleeing a bad breakup, with conflicting ideas about Sir John A’s place in Canadian history. Not to be left out of the argument, Canada’s first Prime Minister, broadcasting live from nineteenth-century Ottawa, shows up with opinions of his own. 

Sir John A: Acts of a Gentrified Ojibway Rebellion is a powerful satire, a creative debate about the past violences of colonial racism and the as yet untested potentiality of restoring harmony between Peoples in Canada. A contemporary classic by Taylor!

Educator Information
Recommended in the Canadian Indigenous Books for Schools 2019-2020 resource list for grades 10 to 12 for Drama and English Language Arts.

Additional Information
128 pages | 5.50" x 8.50"

Little Athapapuskow is collection of poems named after a lake Guy Freedman grew up on near Flin Flon, Manitoba. They represent his efforts to challenge Catholicism and its complicity with the Confederation project, which dismantled the New Nation developing in the Canadian Northwest. The poems are organized into three parts—past, present, and future—and they address the inter-generational impacts of the Church on his family in relation to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. This book is his love song to his home and to his country.

Educator Information
Recommended resource for Grades 10-12 English Language Arts and Social Studies.

Contains poems about the history of the Métis people, family, love, celebration of culture, colonialism, religion, violence.

Caution: Some poems contain strong language and mature subject matter, such as discussions of violence, alcoholism, and sexuality.

Additional Information
86 pages | 7.25" x 5.75 " 

Louis Riel arrives at Batoche in 1884 to help the Métis fight for their lands and discovers that the rebellious outsider Josette Lavoie is a granddaughter of the famous chief Big Bear, whom he needs as an ally. But Josette learns of Riel's hidden agenda - to establish a separate state with his new church at its head - and refuses to help him. Only when the great Gabriel Dumont promises her that he will not let Riel fail does she agree to join the cause. In this raw wilderness on the brink of change, the lives of seven unforgettable characters converge, each one with secrets: Louis Riel and his tortured wife Marguerite; a duplicitous Catholic priest; Gabriel Dumont and his dying wife Madeleine; a Hudson's Bay Company spy; and the enigmatic Josette Lavoie. As the Dominion Army marches on Batoche, Josette and Gabriel must manage Riel's escalating religious fanaticism and a growing attraction to each other. Song of Batoche is a timeless story that traces the borderlines of faith and reason, obsession and madness, betrayal and love.

Awards
2015 Governor General's Award for French-to-English Translation winner

Reviews
"This passionate retelling uses women's eyes to reveal the hidden history behind Riel and Gabriel Dumont. Deeply researched, and rooted in the soil of Batoche." - Marina Endicott, author of the Giller-nominated Close to Hugh

"Combining fine research and engaging storytelling, Song of Batoche is a stirring fictionalized account of events in and around the 1885 North-West Resistance. Josette Lavoie is an intriguing and memorable heroine." - Katherena Vermette, author of the The Break and winner of the Governor General's Award

"Caron weaves a tale of love, betrayal and obsession . . . a vivid and fast-paced retelling of this moment in Canadian history." - Toronto Star

"A fascinating and beautifully written account of Louis Riel and the months preceding the Battle of Batoche, as seen through the eyes of the Métis women. This is a perspective we've not seen before, and Caron handles it with compassion and depth." Lauren B. Davis, author of the Giller-nominated Our Daily Bread

Additional Information
372 pages | 6.00" x 9.00"

A dramatic and lyrical coming-of-age novel about a young Blackfoot girl who grows up in the residential school system on the Canadian prairies.

Torn from her home and delivered to St. Mark’s Residential School for Girls by government decree, young Rose Marie finds herself in an alien universe where nothing of her previous life is tolerated, not even her Blackfoot name. For she has entered into the world of the Sisters of Brotherly Love, an order of nuns dedicated to saving the Indigenous children from damnation. Life under the sharp eye of Mother Grace, the Mother General, becomes an endless series of torments, from daily recitations and obligations to chronic sickness and inedible food. And then there are the beatings. All the feisty Rose Marie wants to do is escape from St. Mark’s. How her imagination soars as she dreams about her lost family on the Reserve, finding in her visions a healing spirit that touches her heart. But all too soon she starts to see other shapes in her dreams as well, shapes that warn her of unspoken dangers and mysteries that threaten to engulf her. And she has seen the rows of plain wooden crosses behind the school, reminding her that many students have never left here alive.

Set during the Second World War and the 1950s, Black Apple is an unforgettable, vividly rendered novel about two very different women whose worlds collide: an irrepressible young Blackfoot girl whose spirit cannot be destroyed, and an aging yet powerful nun who increasingly doubts the value of her life. It captures brilliantly the strange mix of cruelty and compassion in the residential schools, where young children are forbidden to speak their own languages and given Christian names. As Rose Marie matures, she finds increasingly that she knows only the life of the nuns, with its piety, hard work and self-denial. Why is it, then, that she is haunted by secret visions—of past crimes in the school that terrify her, of her dead mother, of the Indigenous life on the plains that has long vanished? Even the kind-hearted Sister Cilla is unable to calm her fears. And then, there is a miracle, or so Mother Grace says. Now Rose is thrust back into the outside world with only her wits to save her.

With a poet’s eye, Joan Crate creates brilliantly the many shadings of this heartbreaking novel, rendering perfectly the inner voices of Rose Marie and Mother Grace, and exploring the larger themes of belief and belonging, of faith and forgiveness.