Indian Horse

March 5, 2018
At the beginning of this haunting and masterful novel from the late Wagamese (1955–2017), eight-year-old Saul Indian Horse is alone, having been abandoned in a blizzard in rural Ontario in 1961. He finds himself in this situation after his parents set off to bury his brother and are never seen again. Saul is left alone with his grandmother; the two then flee the family’s ancestral home on Gods Lake to Minaki, trying to escape the cold. After his grandmother succumbs to the cold, Saul is sent to St. Jerome’s, a Catholic boarding school run to forcefully assimilate indigenous children and “remove the Indian” from them. While his classmates succumb to disease, abuse, and suicide, Saul escapes when his natural talent for hockey lands him a spot on a local Ojibway team in 1966. Saul’s career progresses from unofficial tournaments at makeshift hockey rinks to the minor league in Toronto. However, it stalls after his skills on the ice attract rage from whites “in the black heart of northern Ontario in the 1960s.” Denied acceptance in the world of his choice, Saul is forced to reckon with the trauma of his upbringing and carve out a place for himself. In spare, poetic language, Wagamese wrestles with trauma and its fallout, and charts the long, lonely walk to survival.

Starred review from April 15, 2018

Saul Indian Horse, a young Ojibway from proud northern Canadian clans, lands at a detox center where he attempts to find answers hidden in his tormented past. Saul was raised by his grandmother, whose people distrusted the treacherous white man. Despite all precautions, Saul is kidnapped and taken to St. Jerome's Indian Residential School, where nuns and priests cruelly punish the children in the name of Christianity. A young priest arrives with his passion for ice hockey and recognizes Saul's gift for the game. His extraordinary talent on the ice gets noticed by hockey coach Fred Kelly, an Ojibway with his own history at St. Jerome's, who takes Saul into his family and his minor league team. Saul attains unimaginable successes in the sport. Sadly, deep-rooted demons grip Saul, resulting in blinding rages fueled by alcohol. On the surface, his rage is directed toward the bigoted whites who see only an Indian, not a stellar hockey player. In his core are other dark secrets so well hidden that even Saul has not recognized them. His painful journey to inner peace takes him to the depths of despair and near death. VERDICT The late Wagamese's novel, selected for the 2013 Canada Reads contest, is a stunning, gritty story of survival and resilience that unfolds with genuine raw emotion on every page. Not to be missed.--Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 1, 2018
Many indigenous authors have portrayed the horrific conditions endured by Native children in boarding schools in both the U.S. and Canada throughout much of the twentieth century. But perhaps no author has written a novel with such raw, visceral emotion about the lifelong damage resulting from this institutionalization as Wagamese, a Canadian author who died last year. Saul Indian Horse is taken from his Ojibway family at age eight and placed in St. Jerome's Indian Residential School in northern Ontario, where all that he had known was replaced by an ominous black cloud. Wagamese paints the sad stories of students whose heritage is slowly, forcefully eradicated, though Saul somehow finds respite on the dilapidated hockey rink, where his intuitive skill blossoms under the tutelage of a resident priest. While his Ojibway culture is erased, except in his memories, Saul's affinity for hockey elevates him to a higher plane. He advances quickly from the local Indian league to a feeder club for the Toronto Maple Leafs until racist taunts and bullying wear him down. Published first in Canada, Wagamese's heart-wrenching tale was made into an award-winning movie, and it tells a story that will long haunt all readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)