Strangers: The Reckoner, Book One

Written by David A. Robertson

HighWater Press

978-1-55379-676-3

216 pp.

Ages 14+

October 2017

David A. Robertson, author of the Governor-General's literary awarded illustrated children's book When We Were Young (illustrated by Julie Flett, HighWater Press, 2016), returns his writing to young adults with Strangers, the first book in a new supernatural thriller series called The Reckoner. Still honouring his Cree roots with a story installed in the fictionalized Cree community of Wounded Sky, David A. Robertson shows us life on a remote Manitoba reserve where a past tragedy and current illness and murder have its inhabitants reeling in suspicion and anger.  And it doesn't help that that trickster Coyote is playing a leading role.

Seventeen-year-old Cole Harper has been living in Winnipeg since his Aunt Joan and grandmother moved him there to forget "everything he'd lost in the tragedy and his role in it" (pg. 13) ten years earlier.  Now his friend Ashley Ross is summoning Cole back to Wounded Sky with cryptic messages about needing to come home.   But Cole's return is far from welcome and he learns from Ashley that his phone had been missing and he'd never sent any messages to Cole.  And he tells Cole this minutes before he is shot dead.  While he awaits RCMP Constable Wayne Kirkness, Cole is visited by Choch, the anthropomorphized spirit being Coyote, who reminds Cole of a deal they'd made ten years earlier when Cole had saved two friends, Eva and Brady, from a burning school in which everyone else perished, including Cole's mother. Now Choch expects payback though he doesn't tell Cole exactly what he needs of him.  After Ashley's murder and an illness hits the community, Cole is sure it is to make things right here at Wounded Sky.  But then two more murders and deaths from the illness have the community turning on Cole, whose arrival coincided with the newest tragedies.  How can he do right by Wounded Sky when it's obvious the community, except for a few, resent his return from the city and his earlier role in the fire in which he only saved two lives?

There are mysteries aplenty in Strangers and not all are able to be solved in this first book in the series.  Who murdered Ashley?  How is the research facility, now closed, involved in the tragedies at Wounded Sky? How did the fire at the school start? With the advice of his grandmother to find his peace and "If you accept yourself for who you are, you belong anywhere" (pg. 109), Cole faces the challenges of an angry community, the antics of an arrogant and reckless Choch, and his own anxiety to be the hero needed to heal himself and others.

All legends, Cole, come from some place of truth. Whether they're about Coyote or a sky that was cut and bled the heavens like tears, or a boy that saved others. Look at your own scars. (pg. 124)

Beyond David A. Robertson's intricate plotting, he creates a character of Wounded Sky itself.  He makes sure that readers, Indigenous or not, get an authentic glimpse of life on a reserve: remote, ignored, self-reliant, challenged, vulnerable and cohesive.  From Elder Mariah making hot muskeg tea and Cole's tobacco tie, to the northern lights of spirits playing and Coyote's pranks, Strangers is both singular and inclusive, educating readers and encircling many in its story. I look forward to Book 2 in The Reckoner series so that I can witness how David A. Robertson resolves mysteries first revealed in Strangers and undoubtedly creates a few more for Cole to confront.

Trial by Fire: A Riley Donovan Mystery

by Norah McClintock

Orca Book Publishers

978-1-4598-0936-9

231 pp.

Ages 12+

April 2016

Everybody’s hiding something, big or little.  Everybody tells lies, even if they’re little white ones.  Everybody is a potential suspect until they’re eliminated from the list.  Every smile might be hiding black thoughts and even black actions. (pg. 154)

Teen Riley Donovan has already had a complicated life.  Her mother died when Riley was a baby and her father, who travels extensively as a medical docor with an international charity, left her in the care of her sixties rocker grandfather Jimmy Donovan with whom she toured for years.  Upon his death, Riley has moved in with her mother’s sister Ginny, a police detective, with whom she has just relocated to a small town.

Their moving boxes haven’t even been broken down before Riley discovers the barn of their neighbour, Mr. Goran, on fire and the man trapped within.  In critical condition, Mr. Goran is unable to say what happened, though small-town gossip suggests he set the fire himself for the insurance money.  Riley cannot believe that the kind gentleman from Kurdistan who welcomed them so warmly and spoke so lovingly of his farm would be capable of such fraud or destruction.  Though warned by her Aunt Ginny against poking her nose into police business, Riley discovers a small-town community steeped in bitterness and discrimination against Mr. Goran and knows that their neighbour was the victim, not the instigator.  And Riley sets out to prove it.

Though Norah McClintock's better-known mystery series for young people include her Robyn Hunter Mysteries, Chloe and Levesque Mysteries and Mike and Riel series, Riley Donovan is hardly a newcomer to Norah McClintock's repertoire of crime fiction.  This series which includes at least six titles previously published in Australia is now being published in Canada by Orca Book Publishers and Trial by Fire is essentially our introduction to this young sleuth and fortunately there is a follow-up title, From Above, due out in October. (Earlier English titles published by International Masters Publishers include Breaking In, Picking Up the Scent, Framed, The Secret of Golden Acres, Schooled and Web of Lies.)

While not as gritty as some of Norah McClintock’s other mysteries, Trial by Fire is as packed with the plot twists and turns of any of her award-winning crime fiction.  Moreover, setting it in a small-town, rife with familial connections and intolerant attitudes, adds further tension to this first-rate mystery.  As for Riley, she’s a character whose life adventures I hope we’ll continue to share.  Her past has shaped her into a conscientious and compassionate young woman who sees beyond the surface and endeavours to make things right.  What better grounds to establish a teen solver of mysteries?

Smokescreen

Written by Nancy Hartry

Tundra Books

978-1-77049-405-3

202 pp.

Ages 12+

August 2013

I know that most coming-of-age stories involve protagonists in their early to mid-teens, but Kerry Williams is seventeen and definitely in need of growing into herself by Smokescreen's book end.  You see, at the story's onset, Kerry is thrown into a totally unfamiliar situation: a summer job for the Department of Forestry and Parks in the northern Ontario bush as a cottage development technician i.e., looking for potential sites to develop for cottages.  Kerry is convinced that her mother happily finagled this job for her after she'd disappointed her by losing a major Irish Dance competition due to a fall and subsequent injury ("My body betrayed me.  Correction, my mother overtrained me." pg. 8). Regardless how naive the Toronto teen might feel in her new circumstances, especially after she meets Yvette Bernier, her nineteen-year-old partner for the summer, she is determined to not fail.  Luckily, even though Yvette comes off the bus looking like a trendy urbanite, she knows everything about working in the bush, dealing with campfuls of men, negotiating with bosses who try to push summer students into unsafe conditions, and how to handle herself to ensure a profitable and worry-free summer, and she willingly shares this knowledge with Kerry.

But a raging forest fire has them moving base camps several times and conscripted to work in food prep and camp work for the fire crews.  In addition to their misogynistic boss, Buzz Harcourt, there's Didier, the handsome and friendly crew boss of a fire unit; Matt the pilot who must take them north regardless of Yvette's refusal to go; Rolf, the older, no-nonsense professional camp cook who is eventually brought in; Slash, the scary and scarred man brought in to help with heavy kitchen work; Aubrey, the intense Métis fire crew boss on whom Kerry crushes and Yvette does not trust; and Mr. Sirois, the violent and sexist boss man from New Brunswick.  

Over time, Yvette has learned to trust very few people, particularly ones that seem to have hidden agendas, and she warns Kerry repeatedly about watching her back.  But, with the discovery of Yvette's pink lighter at the source of the forest fire, the young women realize that there is someone who is setting Yvette up, and they must tread carefully to keep their jobs and protect themselves.  Problem is that Kerry and Yvette have very different perceptions about whom to trust, and the emotional baggage they each bring to their friendship has them repeatedly at odds.  It's only when the two get mixed up in a potentially deadly situation that Kerry can see Yvette's vulnerability and accept her own strengths as the basis for their survival.

Nancy Hartry, author of the 2010 Canadian Library Association's Book of the Year for Children Award–Watching Jimmy (Tundra, 2009)–knows how to take a straightforward storyline, e.g., teens taking summer jobs in the bush, and enriching it with psychological intricacies and complex social situations that can take straightforward to dangerous.  And that's probably why her stories hit home for her readers.  There are no paranormal experiences or supernatural elements that take the story into the fantasy and improbable, if not impossible, realm.  The characters in her books could be our children, our neighbours, friends, family.  So, as we read and recognize that these circumstances could happen to anyone and that different elements could be derived directly from the news, we read a little more cautiously, hopeful that no one we know should ever have these experiences, and thoroughly, perhaps learning the means by which survival may be achieved.  Nancy Hartry shares a dramatic story that could be passed down from one summer student to another, or from parent to child, or from anyone to anyone who wants to tell a good story and teach a little something in the process.  Nancy Hartry does both in Smokescreen.