While katherena vermette's first three novels, The Break, The Strangers, The Circle all share the same world and certain characters, she presents her latest, real ones, as being completely different.

Following two Michif sisters, lyn and June, real ones examines what happens when their estranged and white mother gets called out as a pretendian. Going by the name Raven Bearclaw, she's seen success for her art that draws on Indigenous style. As the media hones in on the story, the sisters, whose childhood trauma manifests in different ways, are pulled into their mother's web of lies and the painful past resurfaces.

"It started as a meditation on race-shifting, how these seemingly harmless lies can cause so much destruction and confusion," vermette told CBC Books in an email. "How the burden of that un-truth too often falls to actual Indigenous folks who may already carry the weight of identity issues (I know I do, and have)."

"The examination of that heaviness expanded to other emotional burdens (childhood stuff, parental relationships, coping mechanisms, all the good therapy stuff) and the story became about what I am always obsessed with — how we carry all these things, how say, two closely-knit people can have what looks like the same experience but react so very differently to it."

vermette explained that while the plot seems sensational, the story is really about the two sisters. "It's about where we come from, who we come from, and how it's ever only with each other that we manage to get by," she said.

"So, putting it that way, it's not different from my other novels at all."

vermette is a Métis writer from Winnipeg. Her books include the poetry collections North End Love Songs and river woman and the four-book graphic novel series A Girl Called Echo.

North End Love Songs won the Governor General's Literary Award for poetry. The Break was a finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction. It was defended by Candy Palmater on Canada Reads 2017. The Strangers won the 2021 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize.

real ones will be published on Sept. 3, 2024. You can read an excerpt below.

I text with my niece again, check my bank app too many times to see if the money went through. I want to pack up my office and check off my to-do list. Don't want to think of unsent emails and situations I should really be dealing with.

The sky grows dark and cloudy again. Sigh makes dinner but I don't get up. The food sits on the counter untouched, and Zeke lies on the floor below never letting it out of his sight. Still, I rummage. I stack all the paperbacks, organize according to subject, theme, fiction, poetry. I always clean out and give away a few books every time we move. I accumulate a lot so need to thin them out every year or so. Try to limit myself. I only have two tall bookshelves but manage to wedge more on top of others, pile them on the floor, in the corners.

I consider a system of culling — maybe I should only take what I will need, but who knows what will come up. I think of what I have too much of and should take only what I really want, but they all give me joy and really, they are the only thing I hoard. It's for work, you see. I can always justify something if it's for work.

I can't give away poetry because print runs are so small. Have to keep all the ones I haven't yet read because I have to read them, obviously. Can't give away anything I might lend to a student or might fit on a syllabus. I sit in the middle of piles of books and can't think of a reason to let go of a single one. Not one.

I have tried, with Renee. I have spoken up.

A few years ago, when lyn freaked about it, and I saw the extent of it. What I thought was the extent of it. Renee's middle-aged white woman version of Woodland art and all the space she was genuinely trying to take up. Using her stupid alias to claim something that didn't belong to her. To pretend.

When I told her she shouldn't be doing that — she told me I didn't understand.

When I told her she is not Indigenous — she told me I was the one being silly.

When I told her all the wrong ways things like Shaman and Métis have been used, were still being used — she told me I should question what I was being taught. That I was learning from and working for the same institutions that have repressed "us" for so long. That I was the one who was colonized.

I started to get really worried about her, like something must be really wrong with her — she said she was fine and I shouldn't care so much about what people think. That I would understand when I was her age.

I probably should have done more but I was removed, or felt removed. I lived so far away. I stayed silent. I told myself if anyone asked, I would tell the truth. But no one asked so I didn't say anything.

I almost didn't take this job. I am the worst kind of activist. The inactive kind.

I should email the universities. My new one and my old one. The organizations I work with. I should prepare everyone for what's coming. I should actually do something for a change.

I get up, climb over my book piles, go to my desk and write. And rewrite and rewrite and rewrite and fix and edit, but can't press Send.

I save it to a draft, tell myself it's good to think about these things first, and let out a deep deep breath from down in my lower lungs. It's all the way dark now, and my book piles seem higher. Not one!

Sigh's asleep, stretched out across the couch, his legs so long they go over the arm. I pat my knee for Zeke to come, which he does in an instant and we go out. I want to go to the beach again. I don't want that last time to be the very last time we were there.

In the dark it's so different. The lights across the inlet as pretty as stars. Barges only shadows on the water. Zeke runs to the sand's edge, finds a stick and then a better one.

I sit on a log, not the same one.

Excerpted from Real Ones by katherena vermette. Copyright © 2024 katherena vermette. Published by Hamish Hamilton Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.