In a futuristic world ravaged by global warming, people have lost the ability to dream, and the dreamlessness has led to widespread madness. The only people still able to dream are North America's Indigenous people, and it is their marrow that holds the cure for the rest of the world. But getting the marrow, and dreams, means death for the unwilling donors.
Driven to flight, a fifteen-year-old and his companions struggle for survival, attempt to reunite with loved ones and take refuge from the "recruiters" who seek them out to bring them to the marrow-stealing "factories."
What can I say about this book but "WOW", what a fabulous story.
The Marrow Thieves has won the following awards : American Indian Youth Literature Award for Best Young Adult Book (Honor Book) (2018), Governor General's Literary Awards / Prix littéraires du Gouverneur général (2017), CBC Canada Reads Nominee (2018), Kirkus Prize for Young Readers' Literature (2017).
Interesting that many of the awards are for Young Adult or Young Readers categories. I didn't find it young adult at all. As a 64 year old reader, it kept me fully engaged and constantly worried for the characters.
I enjoyed how the story is set in the dystopian future, but talks so much about the indigenous past. Set in a story like this, one can't help learn and feel how it must have felt like being in the residential schools and the attempts to have your peoples past taken away.
Definitely worth reading!
About Cherie Dimaline:
In 2014, she was named the Emerging Artist of the Year at the Ontario Premier's Award for Excellence in the Arts, and became the first Aboriginal Writer in Residence for the Toronto Public Library. Cherie Dimaline currently lives in Toronto where she coordinates the annual Indigenous Writers' Gathering.
1 comment:
Thanks forr writing this
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