Book Lists: Cold Lake Public Library

Taken from their families when they are very small and sent to a remote, church-run residential school, Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie are barely out of childhood when they are finally released after years of detention. Alone and without any skills, support or families, the teens find their way to the seedy and foreign world of Downtown Eastside Vancouver, where they cling together, striving to find a place of safety and belonging in a world that doesn't want them. The paths of the five friends cross and crisscross over the decades as they struggle to overcome, or at least forget, the trauma they endured during their years at the Mission. With compassion and insight, Five Little Indians chronicles the desperate quest of these residential school survivors to come to terms with their past and, ultimately, find a way forward.

Dominoes at the crossroads : stories

By Kellough, Kaie, 1975- author | 2020

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In Dominoes at the Crossroads Kaie Kellough maps an alternate nation; one populated by Caribbean Canadians who hopscotch across the country. The characters navigate race, class, and coming-of-age. Seeking opportunity, some fade into the world around them, even as their minds hitchhike, dream, and soar. Some appear in different times and hemispheres, whether as student radicals, secret agents, historians, fugitive slaves, or jazz musicians. From the cobblestones of Montreal's Old Port through the foliage of a South American rainforest; from a basement in wartime Paris to a metro in Montreal during the October Crisis; Kellough's fierce imagination reconciles the personal and ancestral experience with the present moment, grappling with the abiding feeling of being elsewhere, even when here.

We two alone : a novella and stories

By Wang, Jack, 1972- author. | 2020

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Set on three continents and spanning nearly a century, We Two Alone traces the long arc and evolution of the Chinese immigrant experience. A young laundry boy risks his life to play organized hockey in Canada in the 1920s. A Canadian couple gets caught in the outbreak of violence in Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The Consul General of China attempts to save lives following Kristallnacht in Vienna. An actor in New York struggles to keep his career alive while yearning to reconcile with his estranged wife. From the poor and disenfranchised to the educated and elite, the characters in this extraordinary collection embody the diversity of the diaspora at key moments in history and in contemporary times. Jack Wang has crafted deeply affecting stories that not only subvert expectations but contend with mortality and delicately draw out the intimacies and failings of love.

The spoon stealer

By Crewe, Lesley, 1955-, author | 2020

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Book of wings : a novel

By Evanson, Tanya, 1972- author. | 2021

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Life in the city of dirty water : a memoir of healing

By Thomas-Müller, Clayton, author | 2021

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There have been many Clayton Thomas-Müllers: The child who played with toy planes as an escape from domestic and sexual abuse, enduring the intergenerational trauma of Canada's residential school system; the angry youngster who defended himself with fists and sharp wit against racism and violence, at school and on the streets of Winnipeg and small-town British Columbia; the tough teenager who, at 17, managed a drug house run by members of his family, and slipped in and out of juvie, operating in a world of violence and pain. But behind them all, there was another Clayton: the one who remained immersed in Cree spirituality, and who embraced the rituals and ways of thinking vital to his heritage; the one who reconnected with the land during summer visits to his great-grandparents' trapline in his home territory of Pukatawagan in northern Manitoba. And it's this version of Clayton that ultimately triumphed, finding healing by directly facing the trauma that he shares with Indigenous peoples around the world. Now a leading organizer and activist on the frontlines of environmental resistance, Clayton brings his warrior spirit to the fight against the ongoing assault on Indigenous peoples' lands by Big Oil.

Satellite love : a novel

By Ferguson, Genki, author | 2021

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On the eve of the new millennium, in a city in southern Japan that progress has forgotten, sixteen-year-old Anna Obata looks to the stars for solace. An outcast at school, and left to fend for herself and care for her increasingly senile grandfather at home, Anna copes with her loneliness by searching the night sky for answers. But everything changes the evening the Low Earth Orbit satellite (LEO for short) returns her gaze and sees her as no one else has before. After Leo is called down to Earth, he embarks on an extraordinary journey to understand his own humanity as well as the fragile mind of the young woman who called him into being. As Anna withdraws further into her own mysterious plans, he will be forced to question the limits of his devotion and the lengths he will go to protect her.

Driven : the secret lives of taxi drivers

By Di Cintio, Marcello, 1973- author | 2021

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Everyone knows your mother is a witch : a novel

By Galchen, Rivka, author | 2021

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From my mother's back : a journey from Kenya to Canada

By Wane, Njoki Nathani, author. | 2020

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What strange paradise

By El Akkad, Omar, 1982- author | 2021

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All the quiet places

By Isaac, Brian Thomas, author | 2021

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It's 1956, and six-year-old Eddie Toma lives with his mother, Grace, and his little brother, Lewis, near the Salmon River on the far edge of the Okanagan Indian Reserve in the British Columbia Southern Interior. Grace, her friend Isabel, Isabel's husband Ray, and his nephew Gregory cross the border to work as summer farm labourers in Washington state. There Eddie is free to spend long days with Gregory exploring the farm: climbing a hill to watch the sunset and listening to the wind in the grass. The boys learn from Ray's funny and dark stories. But when tragedy strikes, Eddie returns home grief-stricken, confused, and lonely. Eddie's life is governed by the decisions of the adults around him. Grace is determined to have him learn the ways of the white world by sending him to school in the small community of Falkland. On Eddie's first day of school, as he crosses the reserve boundary at the Salmon River bridge, he leaves behind his world. Grace challenges the Indian Agent and writes futile letters to Ottawa to protest the sparse resources in their community. His father returns to the family after years away only to bring chaos and instability. Isabel and Ray join them in an overcrowded house. Only in his grandmother's company does he find solace and true companionship. In his teens, Eddie's future seems more secure-he finds a job, and his long-time crush on his white neighbour Eva is finally reciprocated. But every time things look up, circumstances beyond his control crash down around him. The cumulative effects of guilt, grief, and despair threaten everything Eddie has ever known or loved. All the Quiet Places is the story of what can happen when every adult in a person's life has been affected by colonialism; it tells of the acute separation from culture that can occur even at home in a loved familiar landscape. Its narrative power relies on the unguarded, unsentimental witness provided by Eddie.

Cold Lake Public Library

2022 Canada Reads

Scarborough

By Hernandez, Catherine, 1977- author | 2017

Washington Black

By Edugyan, Esi, author | 2018

Five little Indians

By Good, Michelle, author | 2020

Dominoes at the crossroads : stories

By Kellough, Kaie, 1975- author | 2020

We two alone : a novella and stories

By Wang, Jack, 1972- author. | 2020

The spoon stealer

By Crewe, Lesley, 1955-, author | 2020

Book of wings : a novel

By Evanson, Tanya, 1972- author. | 2021

Life in the city of dirty water : a memoir of healing

By Thomas-Müller, Clayton, author | 2021

Satellite love : a novel

By Ferguson, Genki, author | 2021

Driven : the secret lives of taxi drivers

By Di Cintio, Marcello, 1973- author | 2021

Everyone knows your mother is a witch : a novel

By Galchen, Rivka, author | 2021

From my mother's back : a journey from Kenya to Canada

By Wane, Njoki Nathani, author. | 2020

What strange paradise

By El Akkad, Omar, 1982- author | 2021

All the quiet places

By Isaac, Brian Thomas, author | 2021