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But this novel is about playing hockey while Indian-being a star player, a kid with a real chance to make it big in a time and in a world that is only willing to look so far past the color of your skin. He also finds the camaraderie of teamwork, as well as respect and acceptance from boys older and bigger than he. He focuses so keenly on the game that he develops a vision for understanding his opponents-a vision that allows him to take command of the game with well-practiced speed and skill. Even before he’s old enough to play on the team, he is allowed to clean the ice, and he practices in the pre-dawn hours with wadded up paper in the toes of his oversized skates, using a stick he hides in the snow and frozen horse turds as pucks. Saul Indian Horse takes to it like a fish to water.

In used equipment on a small homemade rink in the field behind the school, the older boys learn to play Canada’s pastime.

When a young new priest arrives at the boarding school during the late 1950s, he brings with him the game of hockey. We were Indian kids and all we had was the smell of those fish on our hands. The fourth time we stood quietly, each of us lost in our thoughts, as the fish struggled for air, for life, for freedom. We watched the silvery, brown flash as they flopped out on the bank, their puckered mouths flapping like wet kisses from fat aunties, their tails flipping and slapping against the ground. We lowered the sacks into the water and pulled them up dripping and filled with fish. So much life, so much desperation, so much energy. We could see the fish pushing up that water. Mercifully, he brings it to us in tiny moments both direct and subtle, such as when a group of children escape the school for an afternoon at the creek. First, Wagamese does not shy away from the savage events so many suffered in institutions designed to remove the “savage” from Indian children. They keep company with Cynthia Ozick’s “The Shawl” and Tadeusz Borowski’s “This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentleman” in reminding us that humans possess an astounding capacity for cruelty. Stories of Indian boarding schools in the United States and Canada-whether in memoir or fiction-are uniformly heartrending. I’ve learned that sometimes these revelations reach off the page and hurt you deep in your soul.

The cover art of a quiet, snowy landscape with barn-like buildings on the horizon hinted at a disquieting undertow that promised dark revelations. As an avid reader of Native American* literature, I held Richard Wagamese’s slender novel, Indian Horse, between my fingers longer than I do most before cracking it open.