The paths of the five friends cross and crisscross over the decades as they struggle to overcome, or at least forget, the trauma they endured during their years at the Mission.įueled by rage and furious with God, Clara finds her way into the dangerous, highly charged world of the American Indian Movement. Taken from their families when they are very small and sent to a remote, church-run residential school, Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie are barely out of childhood when they are finally released after years of detention.Īlone and without any skills, support or families, the teens find their way to the seedy and foreign world of Downtown Eastside Vancouver, where they cling together, striving to find a place of safety and belonging in a world that doesn't want them.
“Why has this not been addressed before this time? Why does it take this kind of a devastating discovery?” Good said by phone Monday, noting that the disappearance of children was “anecdotal knowledge” among Kamloops residential school survivors.WINNER: Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction Good says the atrocities of the residential school system are well-documented, and it shouldn’t take such a grisly discovery for the rest of Canada to recognize the incalculable loss that Indigenous people live with. However, the lawyer-turned-author says it feels “petty and selfish” to think about literary prizes in light of the outpouring of grief over the 215 children who were found buried on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, not far from her home in Savona, B.C.
The discovery of a mass gravesite at a former residential school in Kamloops is just the tip of the iceberg
Good, whose mother went to residential school, says she shares the honours with the survivors who carry the ongoing trauma of the government-run system.Ĭree writer Michelle Good wins First Novel Award for Five Little Indians
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