New Book
A beloved story of magic, family, a mysterious stranger, and a band of marauding raccoons–now as a Penguin Modern Classic. Otter Lake is a sleepy Anishnawbe community where little happens. Maggie, the Reserve’s chief, has been struggling with her responsibilities in the community and as a mother to her aloof teenage son, Virgil, after the death of her own mother and the loss of their last connection the old ways of life. Then John, a mysterious white man, pulls up astride a 1953 Indian Chief motorcycle and turns Otter Lake upside down. Maggie gets swept away, but Virgil is less than enchanted. Suspicious of the stranger’s intentions, Virgil teams up with his uncle Wayne–a master of aboriginal martial arts–to drive the stranger from the Reserve, using tricks that would make the Nanabush proud. And it turns out that the raccoons are willing to lend a hand. An exploration of political, religious, and cultural challenges combined with a lighthearted playfulness, Motorcycles & Sweetgrass is a poignant and charming story for the ages.
About the Author: An Ojibway from the Curve Lake First Nations, Drew Hayden Taylor has worn many hats in his literary career, from performing stand-up comedy at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., to lecturing at the British Museum on the films of Sherman Alexie. Over the last two decades, he has been an award-winning playwright (with over seventy productions of his work), a journalist/columnist (with a column in several newspapers across the country), short-story writer, novelist and scriptwriter (The Beachcombers, North of Sixty, etc.), and has worked on seventeen documentaries exploring the Native experience. In 2007, Annick Press published his first children’s novel, The Night Wanderer: A Native Gothic Novel, a teen story about an Ojibway vampire. Last year, his non-fiction book exploring the world of Native sexuality, called Me Sexy, was published by Douglas & McIntyre. It is a follow-up to his highly successful book on Native humour, Me Funny.
