War, relationships and survival explored

Page 19

Three Day Road, By Joseph Boyden

Viking Canada, Toronto

354 pages(hc) $32

Joseph Boyden has the literary world sitting up and taking notice. His first novel, Three Day Road, has thrust him into the limelight, earned him the McNally Robinson Aboriginal Book of the Year Award and put him on the shortlist for the Governor General's Literary Award.

Three Day Road is set in northern Ontario during the aftermath of the First World War. The story unfolds as the elderly Niska travels home with her nephew, Xavier, who has just returned from the war.

Throughout her life, Niska has had the gift of being able to see things. People have sought her advice on where to hunt, and have called upon her to deal with people who have been taken over by the Windigo. But Niska doesn't need her abilities as a medicine woman to see her young nephew is dying. He has been badly hurt in battle, but it's not his physical injuries that put his life at risk. His spirit, too, has been wounded, by what he has seen and what he has done on the battlefield.

Niska knows that if she can't help Xavier to face and overcome his demons she will lose him, the only family she has.

The story is told by Niska and Xavier as readers listen in on their thoughts during the three-day canoe trip from the city to their home near Moose Factory. Those thoughts shift from the present to the past and, through their remembrances, we learn about Niska, how she came to have and use her gift, and how she came to be surrogate mother to her sister's son.

Through the memories we also come to know Elijah, a young boy Xavier meets at residential school who starts out as a friend and becomes like a brother. The two grow up together and are inseparable, even when they enlist and go off to war. In fact, it is Elijah that Niska had come to the city to claim. She had been informed that Elijah has been wounded and Xavier killed in battle, but instead it is Xavier who steps off the train.

Much of what we learn through Xavier's memories takes place during the war, as he remembers what he and Elijah experienced, and how it changed them.

Boyden paints a vivid picture of the horrors of war as they would have been experienced on a personal level: Xavier's realization that one false move could be your last. The lice crawling over his body. The cold. The hunger. The mud.

But, as strong as his portrayal of war is, it only serves as a backdrop for the guts of the story-the relationship between Xavier and Elijah. Despite being best friends, the two are opposites in many ways. Xavier is quiet and becomes even more so after enlisting. He has spent most of his life in the bush with his aunt and he doesn't speak English very well. Elijah, on the other hand, likes to talk and speaks English fluently. And, unlike Xavier, Elijah seems to revel in the role he must assume on the battlefield, in killing the enemy.

During the canoe trip home, we slowly learn about the choices Xavier has made on the battlefield, and how he must make peace with those choices if he is to survive. And we watch as Niska struggles to help him want to chose life over death.

In Three Day Road, Boyden has once again demonstrated his skills as a gifted storyteller. (Boyden's first book, Born with a Tooth, a collection of short stories published in 2001, earned him the nod of critics, and a nomination for the Upper Canada Writer's Craft Award.) Through Boyden's words, we come to know Xavier, his thoughts, his feelings, how he sees the world and the people in it.

As was the case with the stories in Born With A Tooth, Three Day Road doesn't offer up any happily ever after endings. What it does offer up is a good story, well told, with believable, well-drawn characters that must take what life presents them and find a way to continue.