Fall is hunting season ā whether for whitetails, or more to my liking, new books. But with CBC radio host Duncan McCueās latest work, Shoe Boy: A Trapline Memoir, you can have both.
McCueās book, which can be read in a single sitting, is a coming-of-age memoir. At 17, McCue is sent north to spend five months in a hunting cabin with a James Bay Cree family. His father has asked a friend to take McCue into the bush to get his son in touch with his Cree heritage.
Although he has already lived for a few years in the north, McCue feels like an outsider ā lacking the groupās hunting, fishing and survival skills. Heās further isolated because he only speaks a few words of Cree. McCue is the cabin āshoe boyā ā the one who does menial tasks such as sweeping and hauling water. But, heās ready and willing to learn.
He observes how to make fish traps, place leg hold traps, shoot geese and predict animal movements. McCue knows he has been sent out to learn, but even as a teenager heās surprised that no one overtly teaches him, or showers him with life lessons.
Refreshingly, McCue writes Shoe Boy in the same āshow donāt tellā manner. True to his journalistic roots, McCue doesnāt judge or moralize. The reader accompanies him into the woods and his past, and is free to take away what he or she chooses.
Readers will witness the landscape and culture of the Cree, and by default learn much about the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, and its continuing effect on the Cree people.
Shoe Boy, a longer work of creative non-fiction (a genre that combines truth and story) is sure to satisfy todayās audiences, who seem to devour memoirs and documentaries.
Technically, Shoe Boy is what is sometimes called a nonvella ā the long form nonfiction equivalent of the novella. For the past couple years, the publishing company Nonvella.com has been producing these nonfiction gems in an effort to revive the art form in North America.
Other books on Nonvellaās publishing list are: Opium Eater by Carlyn Zwarenstein, The Silicon Rapture by Adam Pez and Foodville by Timothy Taylor.
Many readers will be familiar with classic nonvellas such as Thoreauās Walden Pond and Aldo Leopoldās Sand County Almanac. Shoe Boy might not be quite in their league, but itās still a pleasant and informative trip into the woods.
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