On the other, they are a very real imagining of what might happen again should the White population be faced with a pandemic to which Indigenous people are believed to have the cure. On one hand, the modern schools are a sort of metaphor for what occurred at the real residential schools in Canada. These characters aren’t given any easy choices.

And I think that, among other themes, choices (or the lack of them) permeate the narrative from beginning to end. In fact, I found myself dragging out that last third of the novel, as I was really struggling with the difficulty of his situation, of the impossibility of the choices he was facing. It’s hard not to go into spoilers for this book, as the events that Frenchie experiences are explosively destructive, and the choices he faces are extremely difficult ones. It is quite literally one of Frenchie’s worst nightmares, and for good reason. Frenchie continues to be the main character, but this time, we also get the perspectives of many other characters in the story, as circumstances have required Frenchie’s found family to set off on separate paths.Īt the start of the novel, Frenchie awakens in the pitch dark and knows immediately that he has been captured and taken to one of the new residential schools – the places where Canadian officials have been imprisoning, torturing, and harvesting marrow from Indigenous people across the country. Hunting by Stars picks up a matter of days after The Marrow Thieves leaves off. Determined to find a cure for themselves no matter what the cost, the Canadian government has begun gathering up Indigenous people to harvest the marrow from their bones, which the government believes holds the cure to White people’s suffering. A plague of dreamlessness has spread across a climate change–scorched North America, affecting everyone except for Indigenous people. If you haven’t had the chance to read The Marrow Thieves, it’s the story of Francis (French or Frenchie to his family) in the not-so-distant future. I have no doubt that Hunting by Stars will be another smash hit. The Marrow Thieves has been one of the top-selling Canadian novels for young adults since its release in 2017 and is much beloved by teens and adults alike, all over the country. CONTENT WARNING: Both this book and this review talk about the topic of residential schools, which may be distressing to some readers.Ĭherie Dimaline’s highly anticipated follow-up to The Marrow Thieves comes out today, and boy, does it live up to the hype.

The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline