Trickster tale makes for riveting debut

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This article was published 23/11/2019 (2519 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Homecomings can be hard to deal with, especially when the past isn’t what you thought it was.

In Karen McBride’s debut novel Crow Winter, Hazel Ellis returns after finishing university to Spirit Bear Point First Nation in Quebec, where her Algonquin Anishinabe roots run deep. Aside from the culture shock after spending years in Ottawa studying English literature, Hazel is also grappling with the emptiness left by her father’s death two years earlier. Living once again with her mother and reconnecting with some of her childhood friends helps, but it’s hard.

There are added complications. First, her father left to Hazel and her brother Gus the title to an old quarry that has sat undeveloped for decades — land that some in Spirit Bear Point would like to profit from, and that at least one developer from the nearby francophone town of Ste-Marie des Oblats is pursuing the rights to.

To make things worse, Hazel has been having vivid dreams of a crow who is much more than he seems. In her dreams he is Nanabush, the trickster; and when he starts showing up in Spirit Bear Point as well, Hazel isn’t sure whether to trust her eyes, or his promises to help her.

McBride herself is an Algonquin Anishinabe writer from Timiskaming First Nation in Quebec (which uses this alternate spelling of Anishinabe). She has studied music, English and education at the University of Ottawa, and earned a master of arts degree from the University of Toronto.

McBride weaves many threads into this engrossing tale: band politics, settler-Indigenous relations, colonialism, Anishinabe cosmology as well as a family history that reveals some uncomfortable truths.

At the centre is Hazel and her family, and Hazel’s sometimes-strained (but often funny) relationship with Nanabush.

“You need to relax if we’re going to make this partnership work,” the trickster chides her at one point.

Hazel shoots back: “I’m not convinced that I want to get along with you.”

“This. This is what I’m talking about,” Nanabush tells her. “Everything is so dark and depressing with you. It’s a wonder your people can still handle being around you.”

“You’re an a–hole, you know that?” Hazel says. “All the stories about you left that out. I’ll be sure to add it in when I pass this all on.”

As Hazel begins sifting through band records and learning the history of the quarry that belonged to her father, she also gains insight, through Nanabush, of what really transpired there over the years — and who really owns the land. McBride keeps the reader guessing, whether it’s via revelations from dusty government correspondence or directly from the Seven Grandfathers of Anishinabe tradition.

There’s also a very personal, moving journey of healing Hazel makes. At the insistence of her friend Mia, she takes part in a sweat lodge, to help come to terms with her father’s death. Hazel also helps her mother through the huge hole in their lives, helping her to finally choose a tombstone for her husband’s grave.

And, in her way, she also helps Nanabush, who needs her help as much as she needs his; the trickster, having run afoul of the Seven Grandfathers, is inadvertently freed by Hazel, and needs to fulfil a bargain, with her help, that will see him restored to his true form both in our world and the Spirit World.

The resonance between all the layers of story may be greater for Indigenous readers, particularly those in Quebec, but McBride has woven a tale that will keep readers of any background eager to find out what happens next.

David Jón Fuller is a Winnipeg writer and editor.