From internationally acclaimed author Joseph Boyden comes an astonishingly powerful novel of contemporary aboriginal life, full of the dangers and harsh beauty of both forest and city. When beautiful Suzanne Bird disappears, her sister Annie, a loner and hunter, is compelled to search for her, leaving behind their uncle Will, a man haunted by loss.While Annie travels from Toronto to New York, from modelling studios to A-list parties,Will encounters dire troubles at home. Both eventually come to painful discoveries about the inescapable ties of family. Through Black Spruce is an utterly unforgettable consideration of how we discover who we really are.

Joseph Boyden's first novel, Three Day Road, was selected for the Today Show Book Club, won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the CBA Libris Fiction Book of the Year Award, the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the McNally Robinson Aboriginal Book of the Year Award, and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. His second novel, Through Black Spruce, was awarded the Scotiabank Giller Prize and named the Canadian Booksellers Association Fiction Book of the Year; it also earned him the CBA’s Author of the Year Award. His most recent novel, The Orenda, won Canada Reads and was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Award for Fiction. Boyden divides his time between Northern Ontario and Louisiana.

Joseph Boyden's profile page

"As a portrait of contemporary Native life, Through Black Spruce is funny, frank and refreshingly unsentimental. . . . Boyden manages to show how families can be reconstituted. His characters are vulnerable, true, but they're remarkably resilient." —National Post

"[Boyden] writes with so much heart that readers will have no choice but to fall in love with Will and Annie, however flawed and human they might be." —Georgia Straight (Vancouver, BC)

“Powerful and compelling. . . . Boyden's second novel assures this remote corner of the country and its citizens a permanent place in the Canadian literary landscape. Given the rich cast of minor characters in Through Black Spruce, we can only hope for more.” —Gazette (Montreal)