About the Book
From the award-winning, bestselling author of All the Quiet Places, comes Brian Thomas Isaac's highly anticipated, haunting and tender return to the Okanagan Indian Reserve and a teenager's struggle to become a man in a world of racism and hardship.
Summer, 1968. For the first time since his big brother, Eddie, disappeared two years earlier—either a runaway or dead by his own hand—sixteen-year-old Lewis Toma has shaken off some of his grief. His mother, Grace, and her friend Isabel have gone south to the United States to pack fruit to earn the cash Grace needs to put a bathroom and running water into the three-room shack they share on the reserve, leaving Lewis to spend the summer with his cousins, his Uncle Ned and his Aunt Jean in the new house they’ve built on their farm along the Salmon River. Their warm family life is almost enough to counter the pressures he feels as a boy trying to become a man in a place where responsible adult men like his uncle are largely absent, broken by residential school and racism. Everywhere he looks, women are left to carry the load, sometimes with kindness, but often with the bitterness, anger and ferocity of his own mother, who kicked Lewis’s lowlife father, Jimmy, to the curb long ago.
Lewis has vowed never to be like his father—but an encounter with a predatory older woman tests him and he suffers the consequences. Worse, his dad is back in town and scheming on how to use the Indian Act to steal the land Lewis and his mom have been living on. And then, at summer's end, more shocking revelations shake the family, unleashing a deadly force of anger and frustration.
With so many traps laid around him, how will Lewis find a path to a different future?
About the Author :
BRIAN THOMAS ISAAC was born in 1950 on the Okanagan Indian Reserve, near Vernon, British Columbia. After completing grade eight, he found work in the Alberta oil fields and in construction, eventually retiring as a bricklayer. He came to writing late in life. In 2022, his bestselling debut, All the Quiet Places, won an Indigenous Voices Award, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and CBC’s Canada Reads. He lives with his wife in West Kelowna, BC.
Review :
"A compelling novel, honest and compassionate, haunted by the past. Towards the end of the book, I tried to slow down, not wanting the story to end, but it wasn’t possible." —Mary Lawson, bestselling author of A Town Called Solace
"Brian Thomas Isaac reinforces his place as one of Canada’s most engaging novelists with the tender troubling coming-of-age story of Lewis, a 16-year-old growing up on the Okanagan Reserve. He’s a boy who sees and feels everything with intensity—the joy of swimming in a river, the cruelty of a racist neighbour, the complexity of his mother’s love, the sensations of his first deep kiss, the injustices of the Indian Act, which keeps turning his family’s life upside down. I couldn’t put Bones of a Giant down, wondering to the end if Lewis is just too sweet and vulnerable for the mean world around him." —Carol Off, award-winning author of At a Loss for Words
"Bones of a Giant has good bones. Isaac is a masterful storyteller with an observant eye for nature and a deep compassion for his characters. I loved this book." —Thomas Wharton, bestselling author of The Book of Rain
"A clear-eyed love story to both a people and a place. Brian Thomas Isaac is a vital voice." —David Bergen, award-winning author of Here the Dark
"Bones of a Giant accomplishes everything a great sequel should: powerfully carrying forth the spirit of the first story in compelling new ways while never compromising the heart of its characters. I developed such an affinity with this family and community that the sequel felt like a tremendous gift. With this novel, Brian Thomas Isaac has generously created both a refuge for and celebration of Indigenous resilience." —Waubgeshig Rice, bestselling author of Moon of the Turning Leaves
"Brian Thomas Isaac is one of the most authentic voices among Indigenous authors in Canada. In Bones of a Giant, he spins a complex yet navigable tale that opens a window onto a time of struggle, privation and an undying determination to survive and thrive despite the powerful forces of colonialism that pressed for an opposite result." —Michelle Good, award-winning author of Five Little Indians
"There’s a peaceful rhythm to Bones of a Giant, and a languid quality to the writing which speaks to the pace of bygone life on Okanagan Indian Reserve. But like the river that runs through the region, there are depths to this story that showcase the consequences of racism, misogyny, and colonialism. Thomas Isaac doesn’t shy away from this harsh reality, yet treats his characters with a tenderness and respect that emphasizes their resilience." –The BC Review
"Isaac writes about courage, resilience and survival in the face of racism, poverty and the antiquated tentacles of the nineteenth-century Indian Act. But one also encounters warmth, humanity and humour in his pages—and, perhaps most significantly, a celebration of family." —National Post
"Told with direct, spare prose, this coming-of-age tale is affecting and resonant." —Toronto Star
"It’s not necessary to read Isaac’s earlier book to appreciate Bones of a Giant, but after reading it you’ll want to. Isaac delivers with a calm, laid-back voice, one we can trust. It’s a voice that emerges from the land, the territory you encounter upcountry in this province. Honest in the bone, it unfolds with the mastery of a wise, seasoned storyteller that your gut tells you has seen some bad stuff—an elder who knows that without deep, structural change, there’ll be more." —BC Book World
