By Katherena Vermette, 2016

A first novel, this book by a Winnipeg writer was nominted for the Governor General’s Literary Award. In terms of language, characters and structure, it is about as close to perfect as a work of literature can be.

On a bitterly cold night in Winnipeg’s North End a thirteen-year-old girl named Emily goes to a party with her best friend hoping for a first kiss from a boy she knows from school. The girls have no idea the home is that of a gang leader, and no inkling of the evil they will encounter. As she flees the party, Emily is raped with a beer bottle in an empty snow-covered lot known as the Break. This violent act intertwines the past, present and future lives of the characters.

Emily’s stunned and loving family gather around her in the hospital. In some respects they are like any family keeping vigil. They are, however, indigenous, and thus subject to many unique stresses and prejudices. Her mother Paulina is usually referred to as Paul and her aunt Louisa as Lou. These masculine-sounding names reinforce the fact that they are women mostly raising children without men and that they largely assume the roles of both mother and father.

The shock of Emily’s attack brings back memories of the death of Rain (Lorraine), sister of Paul and Lou’s mother Cheryl, and the mother of Stella. Left motherless as a young child, Stella is struggling to live a normal life. She happens to live beside the Break and, while up in the night with her teething baby, to witness the attack on the girl she does not recognize as her cousin.

Stella calls the police, and those who arrive on the scene are an eager young Metis constable and his out-of-shape burnt-out white partner. The police, like the staff at the hospital, deal with Emily’s case a lot better than that of Rain, the murdered daughter, sister, mother, and aunt. They deal with Emily’s case more efficiently and with less overt prejudice but by no means perfectly.

In what is basically a matriarchal society, the women and girls are used to living their lives on high alert. They are waiting to be called upon to problem solve, to rub each other’s backs, to cook a comforting meal, to dry tears, to reassure each other that everything will be okay. They are used to being followed by creepy white men and to taking the long way home if necessary.

The support and love these women show each other and their children are deeply moving but the effort to stay safe drains them. They often respond to the exhausting stress of their lives by self-medicating with cigarettes, alcohol, and stronger drugs. As a woman and a caregiver, I know how exhausting it is to be on high alert in these roles but I do not know the prejudice that indigenous women encounter every day.

The author has deep compassion for all her characters, including the girl Phoenix, who is what used to be called a juvenile delinquent. The scenes in therapeutic settings are masterful. As a reader I feel how scared and lonely Phoenix is, how her bravado is a false front. She comes from a deeply dysfunctional family, whose own tragedy was set in motion by a gang rape. Phoenix has memories of caring for her five-year-old and baby sisters when she was only eight and their mother was away getting high. The novelist makes me hope someone will eventually begin to break down Phoenix’s hard shell, although that seems unlikely.

Phoenix comforts herself by carrying around and occasionally touching photos of as much of a family as she ever had. She finds comfort in fleeting moments wherever she can, as, for example, in her uncle’s house when everyone is asleep: “Phoenix secretly likes quiet times like these, when everyone is sleeping and she can hear them breathing, like their breath makes the place warm.”

Most of the men in this book are distant, not very good memories. Adult males are either totally absent and living out in the bush or showing up intermittently and then leaving for long periods. For various reasons the women have left traditional life for the city and when they go back to the reserve find they cannot stay. Given this history, it is difficult for the women to trust men, either individually or as a group, and any new man is suspect. Everyone immediately thinks that Pete, Paul’s boyfriend, must be responsible for Emily’s injuries.

When Paul first meets Pete, “She knew better than to trust him but she did, almost immediately.” Because of the quiet practical way Pete cares for Paul, the mother of the injured girl, his stature grows in the eyes of her community and there is at least a glimmer of hope the pattern of male abandonment may be changing. There is also hope in the way that the partner of the young Metis policeman becomes somewhat less racist and begins to show a grudging respect.

The Break is the empty field full of nothing but Hydro lines. It is also the break between the time before and the time after Emily is attacked, and the break between traditional and urban life. To be human is to be broken, and these people are more broken than many others because they are indigenous.

With spring comes fresh hope. The book ends with the death of the beautiful kookom who has held her family close and together and with a sweat lodge ceremony to mark her passing to the spirit world. It is clear Kookom will continue to guide and comfort her family.

The f-word is used frequently in this book. Many literary novels are marred by dialogue that sounds like the conversation of students in advanced programs in creative writing. The language in this book is not academic and seems entirely appropriate to the story.