Three Day Road

Joseph Boyden's debut novel tells the powerful story of two Cree friends from Moose Factory, Xavier Bird and Elijah Whiskeyjack, who volunteer to fight as snipers for the Canadian forces in the trenches of World War I in France and Belgium. Their traditional hunting skills make them unnervingly effective snipers, but while Xavier struggles with the spiritual and moral cost of the killings, Elijah becomes obsessed with his kill count and descends into a bloodlust. The narrative is told in alternating voices: Xavier's harrowing flashbacks of the war and the present-day journey of his Oji-Cree aunt, Niska, who is the last of a line of healers and lives off the land. After the war, Niska paddles for three days to bring Xavier, gravely wounded, missing a leg, and addicted to morphine, home to Northern Ontario. As she attempts to heal him with her traditional stories and practices, the novel explores the profound horror of war, the destruction of traditional Indigenous cultures, and the journey toward spiritual redemption.

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