Review of The Marrow Thieves by Claire Dimaline

In Claire Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves, the world as we know is has been devastated by global warming, pollution, and the disappearance of dreams. In this dystopian novel, only the Indigenous peoples still dream; their dreams are held in the very marrow of their bones. On the run from government agents who will capture them for their marrow, Frenchie and his small tribe head north, hoping to find safety and escape from those who hunt them. Though set in a post-apocalyptic future, Dimaline’s novel reaches beyond the realm of fantasy and touches on issues pertinent to our world today.

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Image of the cover of The Marrow Thieves by Claire Dimaline. Brewster, W. (2017). [Cover photograph of The marrow thieves]. Retrieved February 26, 2019 from https://www.walmart.com/ip/The-Marrow-Thieves-Paperback/55675651

Evaluation

One of the strengths of The Marrow Thieves is Dimaline’s strong character development. The novel is a coming-of-age story set within a post-apocalyptic world. Frenchie, a young Metis boy, has lost his family to the Recruiters, those government agents who take the Indigenous people to the “schools” for marrow-harvesting. When we first meet Frenchie, he is only 11 years old and is on his own. He has lost both his parents, and his brother has given himself up to the Recruiters in order to save Frenchie. On his journey north, Frenchie meets Miigwans and a few other Indigenous people who have formed a family group. The younger people in the group have lost so much and long for the older ways of their people to bring normalcy to their lives: “Us kids, we longed for the old-timey. We wore our hair braids to show it” (Dimaline, 2017, p. 21). The book moves forward five years to when Frenchie is 16 and gaining more and more responsibility. At one point, when Frenchie and Miigwans realize a new school is being built nearby, Frenchie is ready to tell everyone in the group. Miigwans explains that “not everyone needs to know that right now. Sometimes, you have to not bring things into the open, put them aside so that people have the hope to put one foot in front of the other” (Dimaline, 2017, p. 108). Miigwans fulfills the role of wise elder who imparts knowledge to Frenchie. Frenchie is trusted with physically protecting his family (he carries a rifle and knows how to use it), but Miigwans also begins to trust him with emotionally protecting his family as well. Throughout the story, we follow Frenchie’s development, including a requisite love story, as he and his new family face challenge after challenge.

The structure of The Marrow Thieves is primarily linear, though we do get glimpses of the past through “Story” and the characters’ “coming-to” stories. “Story” is the oral history of the Indigenous people, and it is their way of keeping their history alive. This harkens back to the old way of telling stories, though the oral tradition. Frenchie writes, “We needed to remember Story. It was [Miig’s] job to set the memory in perpetuity. He spoke to us every week” (Dimaline, 2017, p. 25). Sometimes, the stories were recent events, such as the earthquakes and floods that changed the landscape; other times, Miig’s stories were older, telling of the original residential schools. In the late nineteenth century, the Canadian government rounded up some 150,000 Indigenous children and forced them to attend boarding school, where they were taught English, Christianity and Canadian customs. The idea was to assimilate the Native people and abolish their beliefs and traditions (“A history,” 2008). The “coming-to” stories are the stories of how each character came to be part of this new family with Miigwans as their patriarch. Through these flashbacks, we learn more about the characters, the terrors they went through, and what tragedies have befallen the natural world. The way Dimaline uses the linear structure interspersed with background information lets the reader understand the story in small, manageable chunks.

Finally, the setting of The Marrow Thieves really stands out as a strength of the novel. Set in Canada in the late 21st century, this is a time and place not too far removed from our own world. However, this Canada looks nothing like the world we know. As Miigwans describes it, “the Great Lakes were polluted to muck [and]… California was swallowed back by the ocean” (Dimaline, 2017, p. 24). The Arctic has melted, many lands are underwater, it rains all the time, and half the population has died because of disaster and disease. Those who are left have stopped dreaming; only the Indigenous peoples can still dream. In this new world, the Canadian government sets up schools “based on the old residential school system they used to try to break our people to begin with, way back” (Dimaline, 2017, p. 5) to extract the marrow (and the key to dreaming) from the Indigenous people. The Marrow Thieves is a warning to us about what will happen to our world if we continue to disregard environmental issues like global warming. At the same time, it’s a stark reminder of colonialism, in Canada and around the world, and the cruel treatment of Native people in our shared histories. The novel doesn’t come across as preachy, but there is much that the reader can take away from this story – about both our past and our future.

Response

I learned so much from reading The Marrow Thieves. As an American, I know about brutal treatment of Native Americans in my own country, but I knew nothing about the residential school system in Canada. This book really opened my eyes to the treatment of Native Americans, and I was horrified to learn that the residential schools in Canada existed until 1996 (“A history,” 2008) and that the church was a very real part of the system. I strongly believe that people should be able to believe what they want and one of my biggest problems with organized religion is the idea of “missions” or trying to force one’s beliefs on others. In addition, I thought the novel presented a post-apocalyptic future in a very realistic way. I do feel very strongly that we are destroying our planet by not taking care of it; novels like this are scary because Dimaline imagines exactly what our world might look like if we don’t change our ideas and policies. Overall, I think The Marrow Thieves is an important book for all people, young adult or not. We must remember how we’ve treated others, and we must recognize how we are hurting our earth today.

Conclusion

The Marrow Thieves by Claire Dimaline is an engaging speculative fiction novel aimed at a young adult audience. Dimaline develops strong, relatable characters in Frenchie and Miigwans, provides a unique structure, and uses the setting to tie the story to our past history and an all-too-plausible imagined future. I really enjoyed reading this novel and learned much about the treatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada. Dimaline presents her story to the reader in an engaging yet non-preachy manner. The novel will certainly invite much discussion and reflection. Overall, I really enjoyed The Marrow Thieves and highly recommend it for ages 14 and up. 4 stars.

Citations

Brewster, W. (2017). [Cover photograph of The marrow thieves]. Retrieved February 26, 2019 from https://www.walmart.com/ip/The-Marrow-Thieves-Paperback/55675651

Dimaline, C. (2017). The marrow thieves. Toronto, Ontario: Dancing Cat Books.

A history of residential schools in Canada. (2008). Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/a-history-of-residential-schools-in-canada-1.702280