Bad Cree
Description
In this gripping, horror-laced debut, a young Cree woman’s dreams lead her on a perilous journey of self-discovery that ultimately forces her to confront the toll of a legacy of violence on her family, her community and the land they call home. "A mystery and a horror story about grief, but one with defiant hope in its beating heart." —Paul Tremblay, author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Pallbearers Club When Mackenzie wakes up with a severed crow's head in her hands, she panics. Only moments earlier she had been fending off masses of birds in a snow-covered forest. In bed, when she blinks, the head disappears. Night after night, Mackenzie’s dreams return her to a memory from before her sister Sabrina’s untimely death: a weekend at the family’s lakefront campsite, long obscured by a fog of guilt. But when the waking world starts closing in, too—a murder of crows stalks her every move around the city, she wakes up from a dream of drowning throwing up water, and gets threatening text messages from someone claiming to be Sabrina—Mackenzie knows this is more than she can handle alone. Traveling north to her rural hometown in Alberta, she finds her family still steeped in the same grief that she ran away to Vancouver to escape. They welcome her back, but their shaky reunion only seems to intensify her dreams—and make them more dangerous. What really happened that night at the lake, and what did it have to do with Sabrina’s death? Only a bad Cree would put their family at risk, but what if whatever has been calling Mackenzie home was already inside?
Notes
- feels like the dreams and getting rid of them is a metaphor for multigenerational trauma
- book is mostly about family and bottling things up more than the actual dreams
Quotes
"When someone dies, you stop remembering them fully." - pg 23
Being by the lake is different from being by the ocean. The ocean announces itself, the steady sound of waves letting you know it's near and ready. By the lake, the noise comes from ZB everything around it. Trees rustling in the wind, birds and bugs chirping. The lake itself, though, stays quiet unless big winds or nearby boats disturb the water into lapping the shore. It watches more than it speaks. - pg 27
'It's not the only way to measure time," kokum said once 'Sometimes time is measured in the days between phone calls with your kokum, which should never be very many. Some- times it's the measure of a heartbeat." - pg 31
The minutes seemed to shrink, like time was an elastic band someone let go after pulling it too tight for too long. - pg 34
The sun peeks out from behind the mountains. I don't know if I'll ever get used to feeling so closed in, surrounded by mountains and the sea. The world looks so small here, like I'm standing in a bowl. - pg 49
That's the thing about abandoned places: they get reclaimed one way or another. - pg 58
'Auntie, how could Sabrina message me? That can't be real"
"She scoffs into the phone. Our ancestors and spirits have been speaking to us in a million different ways for thousands of years. You think they would have a hard time figuring out texting?"
I'm silent at the simplicity of the statement. How easy belief in my truth comes to her.
pg 80
Timing wasn't the luck of it, though. The luck was that we lost Sabrina all at once, instead of in pieces. One thing they don't tell you about when someone you love dies because of a sickness is that death happens in a million different ways in the leadup to the actual moment. We lost kokum one bit at a time as she got sicker and sicker. When she got too weak to hold her cards, we lost the air around her and the aunties playing crib. When she couldn't stand for long anymore, we lost the smell of her baking. When the machines took over breathing for her, we lost the sound of her booming laugh filling any room. Of course, people cried about not getting to say goodbye to Sabrina, but there's nothing very good about a goodbye. I got to say goodbye to kokum before she died and I didn't get to say goodbye to Sabrina, and neither one gave me any peace. - pg 116-117
Mom presses the brakes and her gaze moves to the ditch shead of us. A doe and her fawns are camouflaged in the brush. I would never have noticed. It's amazing what the eyes forget to look for when they've been gone from a place long enough. - pg 137
"That place? As I recall, a certain Loretta Cardinal used to run the Stardust, She was there every night, fighting any" one who looked at her sideways, Auntie Verna says Everyone laughs. She loves throwing memory grenades and then just watching them explode - pg 161
sometimes, laughter is less about what's funny and more about letting someone know you understand that you're in on the joke together.
"Not all hurt is visible."
I still hold a piece of the bad inside me. I used to think enough love was supposed to wipe all the bad clean, but I don't think that's true anymore. The truth is, I'm brimming with love. The love pouring from the tip of kokum's finger when she pointed out wapanewask. The love in Auntie Verna's eyes when we got a good bingo. In Mom's hands carrying the other end of a pile of lumber. I have so much love I'm sick with it. But there will always be bad living alongside it, etched under my skin. Living with bad doesn't make me bad, though it's just there like everything else.