Book Review - In Search of April Raintree

In Search of April Raintree: Critical Edition by Beatrice Culleton Mosionier

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


There ahave been more than a few times over the last couple of years that my book club has chosen a book that I never would have looked twice at. This was one of them.

When I mentioned to a few non-book-club friends that I was reading this book, they surprised me by telling me they'd read it in high school, and as I researched a little, I discovered that this is a fairly common school novel for teens in Canada. Being Canadian by immigration rather than birth, I started to look forward to reading it; in discussions I've discovered that my husband and I vary vastly on the books we read in school, and the same goes with some of my friends. They weren't taken by To Kill a Mockingbird or The Grapes of Wrath, two of the books in school that taught me to absolutely love books, and I realize looking back, that those are fairly classic American tales. In Search of April Raintree on the other hand is a classic Canadian tale of a Metis woman, and her struggles in Canadian society.

April, born to alcoholic parents in a poor neighborhood, doesn't really understand how different her situation is from most Canadian kids until she is taken from her parents, along with her little sister Cheryl, and is placed in foster care. Oh, she was aware she was different, particularly from white children as they taunted her and others in the playground. She knew that her family looked different, acted differently, were seperate from white Canada, but that rift became accentuated when she was placed in a white foster family.

My heart broke for April as she struggled to come to terms with her nationality, attempting to both pass for white and embrace her native half in various parts of her life. Her denial through school was easy enough, as she looked more "white" than her sister, but that relationship gave her away every time.

The style of writing in this book is sparse, and it reads much as though it was written for a younger audience (which I'm guessing it was). I usually like YA books, but most contemporary YA is written in a more adult style for a more sophisticated breed of young adults than I think this was originally written for. As such, I found myself rolling my eyes and being annoyed in some places. The dialogue is stilted and sometimes unbelievable, but the lessons and experiences in the novel are worth the occasional frustration with the writing itself. In Search of April Raintree speaks of a wound to the Metis people of Canada that has festered for generations, and has infected both sides of the divide, from the stereotyped "poor, drunk Indians" to the ignorant white populace who lost out on a chance at cultural diversity. It's sad, almost unbearably so, to follow a child's suffering, but has it's moments of triumph as well, which is what earned it a three-star rating from me, despite the technical problems with the prose.

This isn't a relaxing read, or necessarily one you'll enjoy, but it can be an important one if you are interested in becoming more sensitive to the plight of the Metis people.



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