This is storytelling at its best, using fiction to open a window on truth. Yet, they are emblems of the endurance of the human spirit, resilience and hope. The five characters are concrete embodiments of trauma and its aftermath. This book is a window into how the experience of residential schools reverberates through Canada and how it will always be with us. Tracing the lives of five residential school survivors, she illuminates the raw facts in personal terms and evokes our empathy. If every Canadian read it, perhaps the work of reconciliation would have more chance of success. Michelle Good, herself of Cree ancestry, has crafted, through fiction, a penetrating view into truth. If you want to understand the human side of Canada’s efforts to culturally integrate the indigenous population, you could do worse than read this book. I am not a crier, but this book moved me to tears a half a dozen times. After 250 pages of following five native Canadians who had been through the residential school system, I finally broke down. One residential school survivor asks another this poignant question in Michelle Good’s Five Little Indians.
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