Through Black Spruce

Praise for
Through Black Spruce

Winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize

Winner of the Canadian Booksellers Association Fiction Book of the Year

“Boyden’s novel is, simply, beautiful: you will lose yourself in the richness of its prose and the ever-deepening puzzles it inveigles you into.
Through Black Spruce
is fluent, involving fiction, and as good an advertisement as any for unforgiving wilderness living.”

—
The Times
(UK)

“Boyden … settles in as a major voice in Canadian fiction … [and] assures this remote corner of the country and its citizens a permanent place in the Canadian literary landscape. Given the rich cast of minor characters in
Through Black Spruce,
we can only hope for more.”

—
The Gazette
(Montreal)

“Reflects its crisp, poetic title … [Will Bird is] a thoroughly engaging storyteller … That wry, self-deprecating voice lulls us through a series of adventures alternately sweet and harrowing … An experience beautifully rendered in the raw poetry of Boyden’s prose … Powerful and powerfully told.”

—
The Washington Post

“Funny, frank and refreshingly unsentimental … Boyden manages to show how families can be reconstituted. His characters are vulnerable, true, but they’re remarkably resilient.”

—
National Post

“
Through Black Spruce
is an arresting novel with unexpected twists and turns. It’s also an important contribution to the Native literary voice in this country.”

—Tomson Highway, author of
Kiss of the Fur Queen

“Boyden’s first novel … wowed everyone … [and]
Through Black Spruce
is poised to keep the adulation coming.”

—
Toronto Life,
Best of Fall edition

“I don’t usually blurb friends, but Joseph’s book is so great that I have to break my rules. Buy this book; read this book. You will love it, too.”

—National Book Award–winning author Sherman Alexie, author of
Reservation Blues

“Subtle, thought-provoking …
Through Black Spruce
interweaves two related storylines into a single compelling narrative … Rendered in crisp, parsed sentence fragments with a keen eye for both beauty and brutality … Scenes are rich in detail, and heady with the blood and grit of a life lived close to the ground … An impressive work, demonstrating once again Boyden’s keen ability to bridge worlds and to create characters that will linger.”

—
Times Colonist
(Victoria)

“Boyden writes passionately, with an eye for detail, texture, and sensations … It is Boyden’s gift as a storyteller that enables him to see the beauty in the poverty, the struggle and the daily boredom …
Through Black Spruce
is exceptional for its revealing portrayal of the Crees of Moosonee and for its tangible depiction of life in the North … The book is a wild and crazy ride … [Boyden’s] refreshing perspective in this novel … will do much for a misunderstood part of our country.”

—
Wataway News
(Sioux Lookout, Ontario)

“Joseph Boyden achieves a beautiful balance between his characters and nature, between the hardships of contemporary life and their strong connection to the past.”

—Nino Ricci, author of
The Origin of Species
and
Testament

“With
Through Black Spruce
coming after
Three Day Road,
Joseph Boyden is creating a new imaginary vision of this country and its people—so imaginary that it is inescapably real.”

—John Ralston Saul, author of
A Fair Country:
Telling Truths About Canada

“An extraordinary tour de force … Boyden has created Will Bird with a powerful, unique voice, a compelling voice that weaves through a story through decades of life in the bush … A novel with flesh and blood people we come to care deeply about.”

—
The Chronicle Herald
(Halifax)

“Stunning at being a million things at once, but at heart, it’s a page-turning campfire story told by one person to another in hushed tones, heartbeat to heartbeat … Woven of equal parts violence and tragedy, humour, empathy and forgiveness, [it’s] a muscular book worthy of all the … hype … An intricate portrait of contemporary Aboriginal communities … Emotionally satisfying, suspenseful and well-crafted.”

—
NOW Magazine
(Toronto)

“An astonishingly powerful novel of contemporary Aboriginal life, full of the dangers and harsh beauty of both forest and city.”

—
Oxford Review
(Woodstock, Ontario)

“An engrossing story … Lyrical and assured … [Boyden] writes with so much heart that readers will have no choice but to fall in love with Will and Annie, however flawed and human they might be.”

—
Georgia Straight
(Vancouver)

“Powerful.”

—
Victoria News
(Victoria)

“Boyden writes with unassailable authenticity; his latest is strongly recommended.”

—
Library Journal

“It is a powerful novel of place and the ties that bind families … A fine achievement,
Through Black Spruce
is extraordinary.”

—
Irish Examiner

“Sometimes a first novel is so good, as
Three Day Road
was, that it seems unlikely a writer can achieve something so great again, but Boyden has reached the same heights in his second novel.”

—
The Chronicle Journal
(Thunder Bay)

“A most deserving winner of the Giller Prize.”

—
Ottawa Citizen

“A remarkable view into a lost world dismantled so brutally by the white ‘wemestikushu’ … Boyden guides us through customs, mythologies and rituals that attend life in the bush.”

—
Times Literary Supplement

“Richly textured … An intelligent, multilayered accomplishment, and well worth reading.”

—
Publishers Weekly

“Mesmerising. In the wild, dreams are prophetic and spiritual truths revealed … his characters are most moving when revelations occur in small, quiet moments.”

—
The Independent

“Boyden is definitely a gifted storyteller. His narrative progresses with practised ease.”

—
Quill & Quire

“The sensuous apprehension of a distant, perilous, ineffably beautiful world draws us in and won’t let us go.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

PENGUIN CANADA

THROUGH BLACK SPRUCE

JOSEPH BOYDEN
’s first novel,
Three Day Road
, was selected for The Today Show Book Club; won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the CBA Libris Fiction Book of the Year, the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the McNally Robinson Aboriginal Book of the Year Award; and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. His second novel,
Through Black Spruce,
was awarded the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Canadian Booksellers Association Fiction Book of the Year; it also earned him the CBA’s Author of the Year award. He divides his time between Northern Ontario and Louisiana, where he teaches writing at the University of New Orleans.

ALSO BY JOSEPH BOYDEN

Three Day Road

Born with a Tooth

(short stories)

JOSEPH BOYDEN

THROUGH
BLACK SPRUCE

PENGUIN CANADA

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First published in Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada),
a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2008

Published in this edition, 2009

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (WEB)

Copyright © Joseph Boyden, 2008

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Publisher’s note:This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Manufactured in Canada.

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