A GLACIER'S GUIDE TO DYING

A young Métis man from Alberta winds up trekking a glacier in Montana, fleeing wildfires and hunting his father.

In this energetic sophomore novel, Robbie escapes his complicated family through hard work and heavy metal, at least until his older sisters, Alicia and Rose, convince him that he’s the only one who can find out what has happened to their schizophrenic father, Mike, in the wind for over a year. The search puts Robbie on a bus to Montana with his beautiful, unstable mother, who failed many times to protect Robbie from his stepfather Ray’s ugly abuse. Robbie is a talented fiddler who takes great joy in community dances and performances, but Ray taunts him as “a fairy.” What starts as a saga of family frustration—with some amusing and realistic text chats among the kids—takes a turn when Robbie meets his white, privileged Uncle Doug. After a shocking confession, the two men wind up in Glacier National Park, where wildfires rage and everyone in town is forced to evacuate. This scene, as the men try to drive away, is terrifying, with people and livestock frantic and thirsty. As Robbie and Doug follow a pregnant bison onto a glacier the terror increases, especially after the bison, enduring labor pains, excretes urine and feces all over their supplies. In a bit of weird magical realism, the bison’s calf leads the pair to a crucial discovery. On the slopes of the glacier, Robbie seems to hear the voice of the glacier itself—raising the question of his own lucidity. Robbie understands that things fall apart, even as he begins to grasp that his version of a spirit quest is enlarging his soul. By the end, his future and the glacier’s fate are open—an entirely appropriate finale.

An urgent look at how neglect of family, human and wild, drives us further and further from home.