THE RED CANOE

From Pultizer Prize-nominee Wayne Johnson comes an unforgettable story about two people who come together to right the wrongs of the past.

Buck, government name Michael Fineday, Ojibwe name Miskwa'doden (Red Deer) has just been served divorce papers by his wife Naomi, who is fed up with his savior complex and the danger it brings to their door. Living on the border of Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community reservation Buck makes a good living as a boatbuilder and carpenter. He spends his days alone, trying to befriend a feral cat, until a semi-feral girl shows up, attracted by the canoe Buck's building. Lucy, Ojibwe name Gabe'bineh,(Everlasting Bird), lives in a trailer alone with her father, a local policeman struggling with PSTD from the Iraq war, compounded by the loss of Lucy's mother. She's also mostly alone. Just barely fifteen, since her mother's death she's been systematically abused by her father's colleagues on the force without his knowledge. Threatened that if she ever spoke out, her father would bear the consequences. Buck senses Lucy is in trouble, and doesn't hesitate to plunge into it head-first as usual. On the foundation of their shared Ojibwe heritage, together they build more than a canoe, but a friendship, and together trace Lucy's abuse to a ring that extends farther than either of them ever imagined. Of mixed Native and European descent, Wayne Johnson is the multiple Pulitzer Prize-nominated author of the acclaimed Paul Two Persons Mysteries: Don't Think Twice and Six Crooked Highways; a thriller, The Devil You Know, and many other works of fiction and nonfiction.