Medicine Walk
Medicine Walk (back cover)
Fiction

Medicine Walk

By
Richard Wagamese
“A brilliant novel.” —JOSEPH BOYDEN
Select Format

Growing up in the care of the “old man” he was entrusted to at birth, Franklin Starlight has never really known his biological father, Eldon. The fleeting moments he shared with the alcoholic man have only ended in disasters that haunt the boy. But when father, coming to the end of his alcohol-ruined life, reaches out to sixteen-year-old son their first and last journey together begins. Hesitantly, Franklin obliges his dying father’s wish—to be buried as a warrior—and together they hazard the rugged and dangerous beauty of the backcountry to find an appropriate burial site.

Through the fog of pain, Eldon relates to his son the desolate moments in his life, as well as the times of hope—the family history Franklin has never known. As Father tells the tale, the Son, and the reader, live for the stories, in the hope that they will shed light on the mysteries of a tortured past.

ISBN
9781571311160
Publish Date
Pages
256
Dimensions
5.5 × 8.5 × 0.6 in
Weight
11.6 oz
Cover Art

Related Media

Watch: Richard Wagamese 2015 Matt Cohen Award Speech | Writers Trust of Canada
Watch: Richard Wagamese at Reading for the Love of It | Keynote Speakers Canada
Watch: Discussion and Reading from Indian Horse | University of British Columbia
Author
Richard Wagamese

Richard Wagamese

Richard Wagamese (1955-2017) was one of Canada’s foremost writers, and one of the leading indigenous writers in North America. He was the author of several acclaimed memoirs and more than a dozen novels, including Indian Horse, Medicine Walk, and Dream Wheels.

Praise and Prizes

  • “Less written than painstakingly etched into something more permanent than paper … Richard Wagamese bides his time, never rushing, calibrating each word so carefully that he never seems to waste a shot… . Though death saturates these pages, not a word here is lugubrious. Though revelations abound, there are no cheap surprises… . There’s nothing plain about this plain-spoken book.”

    New York Times

  • “A slim, beautiful, heart-wrenching novel … Richard Wagamese is a marvelous writer, and this is a treasure of a book.”

    Minneapolis Star Tribune

  • “Richard Wagamese has become a master. This brilliant novel is his heart song, his crowning achievement thus far.”

    Joseph Boyden
    author of The Orenda

  • “A complex, rugged, and moving father-son novel … Richard Wagamese’s muscular prose and spare tone complement this gem of a narrative.”

    Publishers Weekly

  • “A deeply felt and profoundly moving novel, written in the kind of sure, clear prose that brings to mind the work of the great North American masters, Steinbeck among them. But Richard Wagamese’s voice and vision are also completely his own, as is the important and powerful story he has to tell.”

    Jane Urquhart
    author of The Stone Carvers

  • “Richard Wagamese is a keen observer, sketching places or people elegantly, economically, all while gracefully employing literary insight to deftly dissect blood ties lingering in fractured families… . A powerful novel of hard men in hard country, reminiscent of Jim Harrison’s Legends of the Fall.”

    Kirkus

    You Might Enjoy

    Based on this book, we recommend you try…
    Dream Wheels
    Fiction

    Dream Wheels

    Richard Wagamese

    After suffering a devastating accident, rodeo cowboy Joe Willie Wolfchild retires to his family’s ranch to mend. There he meets Aiden, a troubled city teenager, and Claire, his mother—and three damaged people slowly begin to heal together.

    Fiction

    Indian Horse

    Richard Wagamese

    Alone in the world and placed in a horrific boarding school, Saul Indian Horse is surrounded by violence and cruelty, but finds a tentative salvation in hockey.

    Fiction

    Ordinary Wolves

    Seth Kantner

    Born and raised in the Arctic, Cutuk Hawcley has learned to provide for himself by hunting, fishing, and trading. But when he leaves for the city as a young man, incompatible realities collide, forcing Cutuk to choose between two worlds—both…