Reeling from his teenage sister’s suicide and worried about his depressed and grieving mother, an Anishinaabe teen finds his plans disrupted immediately after high school graduation. Shane had been planning to leave the reservation for college in Toronto, but with a gaping hole in the roof of his family’s house and a lack of financial assistance, he won’t be going anywhere soon. He longs to move to the city, where he can live authentically as a gay man, preferably with David, with whom he is secretly involved. David, though, is reluctant to leave the reservation or to come out. Shane is closeted too, and his girlfriend, Tara, hopes to accompany him to the city. As Shane’s options become fewer, his desperation and despair grow, leading him to hatch a foolhardy escape plan. In elegant prose, this novel movingly portrays the determination and desires of characters struggling to embrace their various identities within the spaces they inhabit, despite a dearth of resources and overwhelming odds against them, while the tragedy of suicide among young First Nations women echoes through the narrative. (Age 14 and older)

How can Shane reconcile his feelings for David with his desire for a better life?

Shane is still reeling from the suicide of his kid sister, Destiny. How could he have missed the fact that she was so sad? He tries to share his grief with his girlfriend, Tara, but she’s too concerned with her own needs to offer him much comfort. What he really wants is to be able to turn to the one person on the rez whom he loves—his friend, David.

Things go from bad to worse as Shane’s dream of going to university is shattered and his grieving mother withdraws from the world. Worst of all, he and David have to hide their relationship from everyone. Shane feels that his only chance of a better life is moving to Toronto, but David refuses to join him. When yet another tragedy strikes, the two boys have to make difficult choices about their future together.

With deep insight into the life of Indigenous people on the reserve, this book masterfully portrays how a community looks to the past for guidance and comfort while fearing a future of poverty and shame. Shane’s rocky road to finding himself takes many twists and turns, but ultimately ends with him on a path that doesn’t always offer easy answers, but one that leaves the reader optimistic about his fate.