E-book
Three day road [electronic resource] / Joseph Boyden.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780143175643 (electronic bk. : Adobe Digital Editions)
- ISBN: 0143175645 (electronic bk. : Adobe Digital Editions)
- Physical Description: 1 online resource (398 p.)
- Publisher: Toronto : Penguin Canada, 2008.
Content descriptions
| General Note: | Description based on print version record. |
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | Indians of North America > Canada > Fiction. World War, 1914-1918 > Fiction. Indiens d'Amérique > Canada > Romans, nouvelles, etc. Guerre mondiale, 1914-1918 > Romans, nouvelles, etc. |
| Genre: | Electronic books. |
Other Formats and Editions
Electronic resources
- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2005 March #2
This first novel is set in Canada and Europe during the First World War. When Xavier, a Cree boy raised on a reserve, enlists in the army with his friend Elijah, the boys abruptly enter a modern world in which their ethnic appearance is a signal to others that they are to be treated differently. Even as the boys become expert marksmen, they are ostracized by their comrades. Xavier reacts by turning inward, grappling with the meaning of the war and with guilt over the killing he has done; Elijah, meanwhile, turns outward, becomes consumed with killing, and dedicates himself to being the world's best sniper. Loosely based on the life of Francis Pegamahgabow, a real-life World War I sniper, this is a delicately written, almost poetic novel. Neither pro- nor antiwar, it posits that war is something that will always exist, and all we can control is our own place in it. Ultimately, Boyden writes about life, not war. The novel can be very slow moving, but it will prove rewarding for patient readers. ((Reviewed March 15, 2005)) Copyright 2005 Booklist Reviews. - Choice Reviews : Choice Reviews 2005 December
The author of this exceptional first novel teaches at the University of New Orleans and is a Canadian with Metis Nation roots. The novel takes place in WW I France (perhaps an unlikely locale) and tells the story of two moccasin-clad Ojibwa warriors, Xavier Bird and Elijah Whiskeyjack, who achieve reputations as expert snipers and experience the brutalities and ambiguities of the battlefield. Pairing the genres of war epic and Native initiation novel, Boyden juxtaposes the WW I battlefield experiences with the three-day downriver journey of Niska, an Oji-Cree medicine woman, who paddles her war-wounded and morphine-addicted nephew back to their forest home. In its gripping tale of the tensions between cultures, this book becomes a genre paradigm and takes its place among classics about original peoples, Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony, N. Scott Momaday's House Made of Dawn, and Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine among them. Rivaling Debra Magpie Earling's Perma Red, the novel asks questions and refuses to give easy answers, but it provides a satisfying resolution that the other novels do not. Summing Up: Essential. All readers; all collections. Copyright 2005 American Library Association. - Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2005 February #2
Two Cree Indians from eastern Canada experience WWI trench warfare in Canadian Boyden's first novel (following his story collection, Born with a Tooth, 2001). Xavier Bird and Elijah Whiskeyjack, so-called bush Indians who live in the woods, have been friends since childhood. Xavier learned his hunting skills from his auntie, Niska, and he in turn taught Elijah, who was schooled by nuns and speaks far better English than Xavier. The war is over when the story opens and a fever-stricken Xavier, sustained only by morphine, is coming home to Niska. It then alternates between Xavier's last days, his and Niska's recollections of the past (Niska is a diviner and windigo, or cannibal, killer), and scenes of the European battlefield, which get pride of place. What prompted the Crees to enlist is unclear (a curious omission), but Niska blessed them with the wisdom of the ages: "You must do what you must do." Boyden's rendering of the war is both faithful and wrong-headed. As to its faithfulness, it doesn't deviate from the standard accounts of trench warfare, so that here are the Canadian lines, while a few yards away is Fritz (aka the Hun, the Bosch). There are endless trench raids as snipers fire from nests and big guns roar. There is discomfort (lice, trench foot), there is horror, and there is morphine. The quiet Xavier and the flamboyant, garrulous Elijah are just two more privates sucked into this hellhole. They're superb marksmen, and, as a sniper, Elijah racks up an astonishing 356 kills as he becomes a morphine addict and walks a fine line between heroism and homicide (a standard-case history). As for the wrong-headedness, it lies in Boyden's lack of awareness that his oft-told tale leans now toward the numbing rather than the revelatory.What might have been a punchy novella, linking the Cree windigo killer phenomenon to the killing fields of Europe, has been inflated to a size that obscures what might have been its uniqueness. Copyright Kirkus 2005 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved. - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2005 May #2
In 1916, two Cree Indians enlist in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces and are sent to the western front as sharpshooters: Xavier spots, and Elijah shoots. Elijah becomes addicted to the fame that attends their efforts, taking ever-greater risks to increase his "kills" and carrying a bag of scalps around with him as proof of his success. Xavier, meanwhile, watches as his childhood friend slips into madness. In the end, only Xavier returns from battle, though broken in body and spirit. In straightforward, concrete prose, first novelist Boyden evokes a ghastly poetry of death: "small red flowers bloom around dead soldiers and their rifles cover[ing] up the horror before the flowers are pounded into black slime by artillery." This is an exceptional tale of hell barely survived during World War I. Enthusiastically recommended for public libraries.-David Keymer, Modesto, CA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information. - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 2019 January #1
Canadian author Boyden chronicles two Cree hunters as they become successful snipers on the battlefields of World War I. When one returns home broken in spirit and body, his aunt, a respected healer, tries to restore him while also mourning the slow decline of her people. (
Copyright 2018 Library Journal.LJ 5/15/05) - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 2005 March #3
When Cree Indians Xavier Bird and Elijah Whiskeyjack join the Canadian Army in 1915, they expect to go to France, become warriors and kill Germans. What they don't expect is that the war will drive one of them mad and make the other a morphine-addicted cripple. This is Boyden's first novel (after the story collection Born with a Tooth), a powerful tale of two young men numbed by the horrors and brutality of trench warfare. Boyden vividly portrays the chaos, fear, cowardice and courage of infantrymen condemned to wallow in the mud and blood of the Western Front. Best friends Xavier and Elijah are both expert sharpshooters and, using the field craft they learned hunting in the forests of Hudson Bay, quickly become accomplished snipers. Elijah is outgoing and boastful, while Xavier is quiet and reserved, but both are deadly efficient soldiers. A parallel story line tells of Niska, Xavier's aunt, a Cree Indian prophet and healer, as she tells of the sad decline of Cree culture and waits for her nephew to come home. As the war drags on, one of the men's addiction to drugs and killing causes him to take extreme risks; when he finally commits murder to hide the ugly truth, his friend sees only one solution to save his own soul. Friendship is riven with resentment and war is stripped of glory in this remarkable, wrenching novel, the work of a gifted storyteller. Agent, Nicole Winstanley at Westwood Creative Artists (Toronto). 6-city author tour. (May 9) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
