Keeper'n Me

Richard Wagamese

Sep 2011 · Sold by Anchor Canada

About this ebook

When Garnet Raven was three years old, he was taken from his home on an Ojibway Indian reserve and placed in a series of foster homes. Having reached his mid-teens, he escapes at the first available opportunity, only to find himself cast adrift on the streets of the big city.

Having skirted the urban underbelly once too often by age 20, he finds himself thrown in jail. While there, he gets a surprise letter from his long-forgotten native family.

The sudden communication from his past spurs him to return to the reserve following his release from jail. Deciding to stay awhile, his life is changed completely as he comes to discover his sense of place, and of self. While on the reserve, Garnet is initiated into the ways of the Ojibway--both ancient and modern--by Keeper, a friend of his grandfather, and last fount of history about his people's ways.

By turns funny, poignant and mystical, Keeper'n Me reflects a positive view of Native life and philosophy--as well as casting fresh light on the redemptive power of one's community and traditions.

Ratings and reviews

I thought it was a great and interesting book up until it stopped working. Keeper'n me is a four part series, set between four books. This edition is said to promise all 336 pages but instead provides somewhere around 90. Its a great book, only Im stuck with a quarter of it.

The first third of Keeper ‘n Me details the life of Garnet Raven who was taken from his Objibway parents when he was three years old and raised in non-native foster homes. He grows up never knowing who or where his real family is and his search for identity and belonging are authentic and poignant. Like so many First Nations people from similar backgrounds, his dysfunctional life inevitably finds him in prison where he is contacted by someone who says he’s his brother. Indeed, he has an entire family living on a reserve in northern Ontario. Upon his release and with nowhere else to go he decides to check it out. The balance of The Keeper ‘n Me is the story of his reunion with his family on the remote White Dog reserve and his introduction to the culture and spirituality of his ancestors by an old man referred to as Keeper. Life on the White Dog reserve is mostly boring and so is reading about it. The anecdotes about events are quaint but mostly uninspiring. The importance of the connection Indigenous people have with nature is reinforced again and again and ... The climax of the story comes when Garnet spends four days in the wilderness by himself – a vision quest of sorts, which, of course manifests in meaningful dreams about his ancestors. If this book wasn’t written by an Indigenous person it would be dismissed as a clichéd misrepresentation of the contemporary First Nations people.

Horrible book!

About the author

RICHARD WAGAMESE, an Ojibway from the Wabaseemoong First Nation in northwestern Ontario, was one of Canada's foremost writers. His acclaimed, bestselling novels included Keeper'n Me; Indian Horse, which was a Canada Reads finalist, winner of the inaugural Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature, and made into a feature film; and Medicine Walk. He was also the author of acclaimed memoirs, including For Joshua; One Native Life; and One Story, One Song, which won the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature; as well as a collection of personal reflections, Embers, which received the Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Award. He won numerous awards and recognition for his writing, including the National Aboriginal Achievement Award for Media and Communications, the Canada Council for the Arts Molson Prize, the Canada Reads People's Choice Award, and the Writers' Trust of Canada's Matt Cohen Award. Wagamese died on March 10, 2017, in Kamloops, B.C.