From the Ashes

April 15, 2021
A M�tis-Cree writer and professor examines how poverty, addiction, and poor choices led to a life of homelessness and crime. The son of a M�tis woman and an Algonquin-Scot man, Thistle spent much of his childhood in Saskatchewan dealing with his drunk, abusive father, who taught his children how to beg and steal. Eventually, the police put the children into foster care until Thistle's paternal grandparents became their guardians. Under their stern but loving care, the author's life normalized somewhat. Meanwhile, however, schoolmates taunted Thistle and his siblings for being "ugly Indians" abandoned by their parents. Self-identifying as Italian, the author began drinking and taking drugs during high school. Though his burgeoning habit temporarily abated when he fell in love with a young woman named Karen, an argument with his grandfather angered him enough to spend all of his hard-earned college money on drugs and alcohol. When his grandfather finally told him to leave, Thistle's life spiraled out of control. He became homeless and relied on "food banks, churches and shelter beds," drifted from city to city, and got addicted to crack. One night, while high, he fell 35 feet from an open window and shattered his leg, which eventually developed gangrene. He was in and out of jail and rehab, and his health continued to deteriorate drastically. Estranged from family and gravely ill, he returned again to rehab, "shaking and vomiting and praying for mercy." Then he started the long road back to not only personal recovery, but also reconciliation with friends, family, and his Native past. As Thistle narrates his personally harrowing, ultimately uplifting story of survival, he also addresses the life-altering damage that colonialism has wrought on Indigenous people everywhere--especially "how, when one's Indigeneity is stripped away, people can make poor choices informed by pain, loneliness, and heartbreak, choices that see them eventually cast upon the streets, in jail, or wandering with no place to be." A courageously heartfelt journey from profound self-destruction to redemption.

COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from May 10, 2021
Thistle traces his path from neglected child, then homeless addict, to lauded academic in his powerful debut. Born in 1976, he grew up in Saskatchewan in a volatile household after his mother left him and his older brothers in the care of their alcoholic father. “ brash troublemaker,” Thistle struggled in his studies, and after high school became addicted to alcohol and crack and ended up on the streets of Vancouver, where he’d “never seen such squalor.” The sections about this time are particularly grim, including a startling depiction of Thistle being stabbed in the face. Scarred both physically and mentally, Thistle at one point was so desperate that he attempted to rob a store by pretending that a submarine sandwich was a gun (“I thought, This has got to be the worst moment of my life”). After calling the cops on himself, he went to jail and eventually got clean in rehab. In his mid-30s, he became a student at Toronto’s York University where he now teaches Métis studies. Thistle’s judicious use of his own poetry between chapters captures his deep suffering (“i swill back the pain; it burns and it belches rage and despair”) and underscores how he ended up one of the lucky few to emerge from what he endured. Readers will be gripped. (June)Correction: An earlier version of this review misstated that the author was at one point addicted to heroin.