Adam's Tree
CBC Books | | Posted: July 2, 2019 4:01 PM | Last Updated: July 3, 2019
Gloria Mehlmann
These are highly imaginative and dark stories about life on the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan during the 40s and 50s.This is where young Sophie lives and experiences abuse, poverty and racism, while dreaming of a kinder world. Where the men who return to Cowessess after the war struggle with unacknowledged PTSD, punish themselves and the people who love them. Imogene gives a baby up for adoption in the city and is lifted by the compassion of the strong women who support her return to the reserve with baby Adam. These characters inform us of the dehumanization imposed upon them by colonization, but also the indomitable human spirit. (From Radiant Press)
From the book
Six-year-old Sophie knows her grandmother doesn't realize she is awake and peering out into the early dawn, into a blue-green sky. Kokum has carried a pail of water up from the creek, but instead of coming to the house, she enters the vegetable garden at the gate, trying not to spill. Inside the barbed wire fence, she sets the pail down by the lilac bush and takes a deep breath, hands on hips. Sophie inhales, too, sensing cool air in her lungs. Kokum's black tam, slanted across her forehead, makes her look like a man, Sophie thinks, but not a meanone like Mushom, who always glowers at her.
Kokum lifts the pail and splashes water onto mounds of fresh black soil that swallow down the cascades of sparkling water. Sophie believes she can smell the wet soil. She moves her knees higher onto the blanket, yelping at the cold touch of the iron bedstead.
From Beating Hearts in Adam's Tree by Gloria Mehlmann ©2019. Published by Radiant Press.