Motorcycles and Sweetgrass
Jul. 12th, 2019 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yuuagoI finished Drew Hayden Taylor's Motorcycles and Sweetgrass today, and wow, was that ever a good read.
This book has a little bit of everything - humour, some romance, a bit of drama, great familial relationships, and a touch of magic too. It was a really fun read, and pretty hard to put down.
The premise is - a mysterious stranger on a motorcycle shows up in a sleepy Anishnawbe community, and everything gets turned completely upside down.
Some of you can probably guess who this stranger might actually be... ;) I definitely recommend it to people who like stories about folkloric figures existing in the modern world.
I kind of wish that this novel had a fic-writing fandom (or... any kind of fandom...) because it has a colourful cast of really delightful characters, and I'd love to spend more time with them. Aside from the Mysterious Stranger, who is lots of fun (I'd love to read a ton of Further Adventures about him), the novel centres around Maggie Second, the stressed-but-levelheaded chief of Otter Lake; Virgil, her son, who really doesn't want to deal with his mom getting involved with some weirdo on top of all the trials of being 13; and Maggie's brother Wayne, an oddball hermit who's training hard to develop an Anishnawbe system of martial arts.
The relationships between all of them (and the broader community) were well-developed - in particular I really liked what was going on with Virgil and Maggie; Virgil's concern for his mom was really touching. And I just really enjoyed being along for the ride and watching everything unfold around them (or turn into a bit of a mess, depending on how you look at it).
It looks like this author has published a short science fiction story collection - Take Me To Your Chief - and some of the pieces in there use the same Otter Lake setting. Not sure if it has any of the same characters in it, but my library has it, so I guess I'll find out! Looking forward to it, regardless.
This book has a little bit of everything - humour, some romance, a bit of drama, great familial relationships, and a touch of magic too. It was a really fun read, and pretty hard to put down.
The premise is - a mysterious stranger on a motorcycle shows up in a sleepy Anishnawbe community, and everything gets turned completely upside down.
Some of you can probably guess who this stranger might actually be... ;) I definitely recommend it to people who like stories about folkloric figures existing in the modern world.
I kind of wish that this novel had a fic-writing fandom (or... any kind of fandom...) because it has a colourful cast of really delightful characters, and I'd love to spend more time with them. Aside from the Mysterious Stranger, who is lots of fun (I'd love to read a ton of Further Adventures about him), the novel centres around Maggie Second, the stressed-but-levelheaded chief of Otter Lake; Virgil, her son, who really doesn't want to deal with his mom getting involved with some weirdo on top of all the trials of being 13; and Maggie's brother Wayne, an oddball hermit who's training hard to develop an Anishnawbe system of martial arts.
The relationships between all of them (and the broader community) were well-developed - in particular I really liked what was going on with Virgil and Maggie; Virgil's concern for his mom was really touching. And I just really enjoyed being along for the ride and watching everything unfold around them (or turn into a bit of a mess, depending on how you look at it).
It looks like this author has published a short science fiction story collection - Take Me To Your Chief - and some of the pieces in there use the same Otter Lake setting. Not sure if it has any of the same characters in it, but my library has it, so I guess I'll find out! Looking forward to it, regardless.
Yuu. Fic writer & book lover. M/Canada.