Thank You for the review copy. My best wishes to the author. I loved the title so much that I went into it with a lot of expectations. Somehow, it didn't work that much for me. But don't let that deter you because the writing style was very good. Do give it a try.

I was very excited to read this to read a story about Native Americans by one.
The book is very bleak and I only got about a quarter in. The young teenage girl is raped at the beginning of the book. The author then goes into her relationship with not one boy, but another girl, describing explicit sex.
I cannot imagine a survivor that young of that trauma being able in contact enough with her body after enjoy anything sex-related for a young time. And also teen girls having sex, should not be written at all really, but especially not by a man. I found it very disappointing.

What starts as a tale about Native Americans and abuse develops into a story of bloody vigilante executions. It's well written and suspenseful but the psychological side was not as worked out as it should have been.

Very suspenseful and entertaining book! Great character development, especially some of the surprises with the minor characters! Loved the story being told in 2 points of view. Lots of twists and turns.

Every now and then you come across a book that is a challenge whether it be in content, characters, language, style or subject matter. Red Canoe was all of these for me. The writing style is blunt and simple, words are not thrown around here and sometimes it's raw. There were points where the bleakness was overwhelming and I didn't want to finish, where it was just too much to keep going. But I did and was hugely rewarded by the sheer joy of these characters. Buck, Lucy, Booker, Kitty, etc. They are REAL and the spark of life . At the ending I was left sad that the book was over and these characters were gone from my life. I just knew they kept existing and I wanted MORE. The subject is tough and heartbreaking but this story justifies faith in the human spirit.

At the outset of The Red Canoe by Wayne Johnson, there is a quotation, the sentiments of which cut to the quick more and more as I read this book of fiction that could very well reflect true-to-life incidents. The quotation talks about the silenced who had not been heard nor did they have a voice. Common grace righteous people, in my opinion, will speak up for these silenced and silent ones. Buck was such a one to speak up even at personal cost. Definitely, I'd say he's one of this book's heros.

In this narrative we have Lucy, a teenager, and her Dad, who is a cop. Will leave it to future readers to figure out on which side of this human rights equation he stood. Dirty cops and others that prey on young girls, especially those Native American girls, on or off the reservation, are seen targeted in a most despicable manner.

The reader will also meet Jean, Booker, Ryan and his Mom, and Naomi, each of varying ethnic backgrounds and roles in the story. Add the Red Canoe itself along with Gyp, the barometer cat. The snowy winter ending will both chill and warm the heartstrings; at least it did mine.

Teenage readers will more than likely find this book spell-binding, heart-racing and hopefully, even inspiring towards championing and whistle-blowing causes such as are revealed within the pages of this novel. However, I would personally not restsrict reader-ship to that age group. I believe it's good for one and all to be informed and do whatever they can within their power to help the unjustly afflicted peoples perpetuated wrongly against by those in positions of power and influence. I assume this could quite likely be what the author had in mind.

~Eunice C., Reviewer/Blogger~

January 2022

Disclaimer: This is my honest opinion based on the complimentary, review copy sent by NetGalley and the publisher.

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It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the subject matters of the book as well as those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on abuse, child endangerment, violence, parental neglect, sexual abuse, psychological distress, racially motivated crime, & others.

Lucy is on the cusp of her fifteenth (15) birthday & has just been violently raped by a person she grew up calling ‘uncle’; a friend & co-worker of her fathers’, a member of the local police force & a man who, we come to find out, is one of many men who benefit from the ring of horrendous abuse inflicted on the underprivileged youth in the town. I want to make something excruciatingly clear off the cuff; violence against children is terrifying, horrendous & monstrous. None of what I will be saying in my review seeks to state the opposite. However, if you are embarking on this read as a seasoned thriller or horror genre reader you might find that this book is a case wherein horrible things are told to the reader without adequate situational build-up. By that I mean that everyone on earth knows that child abuse is horrific, we do not need detailed scenes to play-out for us to understand that. What a book should seek to do is render the reader a part of the environment in which horrible things take place, specifically when dealing with the thriller or horror genre. It is not enough to list scary things, you need to make the reader aware of the psychological & physical distress that the character is experiencing. Again, we do not need to read about the physical act of child abuse for us to understand that it’s out of this world bad; we need a scene to be set which imposes the sentiment of dread, terror, anxiousness, & fear into the mind of the reader. A book should seek to encapsulate everything that is terrifying, often things that happen in our very real lives, as a way to encourage the reader to necessitate reminding themselves that they are not, in fact, caught between the words in the pages; that the horror they feel is kept within the confines of the story.

That being said, this book was terribly difficult for me to read. I do not seek-out stories which list horrific acts against children because I find it brutal to work my way through fictional works that deal with the monstrous reality that very real children deal with, every day. I do acknowledge that stories that involve actual facts within the make-belief plot are in fact important, however, I found this story particularly difficult to work through as there is little girth to the plot itself without the repeated listing of acts of abuse. Due to this fact, the story felt interminably long. Though I appreciate that this book is not one which sees the characters in high speed chases along strips of highway; there wasn’t any specific turn of events which encouraged me to want to read-on. Nothing transpires throughout the plot which might not already have been posed as a probability early on.

When asked to believe that no one in an entire town would suspect the Catholic church of having some form of involvement in the abuse of children I was a bit shocked. I would like to highlight that I am in no way shaming anyone who partakes in religions or this one in particular. However, most people in North America have heard at least one story in which the Catholic church was privy to situations of child abuse (I shall put this as politically correctly as I can without seeking to offend). Therefore, how might a small town in which generations of children having been abused, drugged, murdered & harmed, was there not a single adult who thought to wonder why the religious authorities, who very obviously had been in tight relations with the policing body of the town, might hold some form of knowledge or involvement in the repeated cases which filtered through such a small group of people.

The next point I want to raise is that of character depth & authenticity. This book has two groups of characters, the young (aged between 14-17) & the adults (ages unknown but presumed to be around 35-50). I found it difficult to distinguish between both Buck & Lucy in terms of distinct voices during their point of views.

I found the development of Lucy’s character a bit bizarre. Lucy knowns that she cannot identify all her assailants, she knows that many men are involved in her abuse, she knows that some of the men that she can identify are in the police force yet, as the story progresses she goes out of her way to put herself & everyone involved in helping her, in horrible danger. I could not help but feel utterly annoyed with her character by the end of the story. You are a child & though your life experiences have involved you in the perils of horrible adult people in your life, you are not equipped to manoeuvre your way through the adult circles that keep these predators safe. To have Buck repeatedly ask her not step out of line, only for her to do so, bringing no advancement to the story is ghastly. Why did she constantly have to put everyone in danger? What good did her actions ever bring? Was she suddenly filled with bravery because she felt that no harm could befall her due to Buck? Where was the development of her character to be the person who carried around a gun & wanted to shoot a police officer in the middle of the station? We go from reading about her suicidal ideations to her desire for murder in such a short period of time that I would have hoped for more details to be given to her transition; perhaps more details as she went from feeling helpless to hopeful.

I also found Lucy to be a difficult character to appreciate because of the way she treats everyone around her. These secondary characters are the epitome of tropes. Booker, the Black character, has a history of violence, his parents are divorced, he doesn’t see his dad, he speaks in broken slang even though we are told he is ‘traditionally’ smart (not to say that AAE is not ‘real’ communicating but that his character feels trapped between speaking in AAE & then, not, for no other purpose than when he is tormenting Ryan). Speaking of which, Ryan, the East Asian character, is described as overtly ‘nerdy’, very scholastically inclined & also a character that has Asperger’s. After researching a bit more about this condition I came across an article which stated that Asperger’s was no longer included in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as of 2013 upon it’s fifth publication. I can assume (with uncertainty) that this term was kept in this book as many of the terms used by the characters are beyond dated & often employed to shame & torment another.

This meaning that the utilization of racial slurs was very high within this text as well as terminology which socially has become encouraged to fall into disuse. I appreciate that the characters in tis book are struggling to find their way in a world which has very clearly told them that it doesn’t care about their well-being but, I don’t know that we needed to read about the utilization of the R-word when Ryan was in a scene as a way to reinforce the abuse he was subject to because his friends assumed his mental diagnostic. As well, there is a scene in this book wherein Lucy says that Ryan was ‘putting on an act’ & I don’t understand what that means because….why would he do that? Also, later in the book Ryan maintains his behavioural tendencies even though Lucy stated them to be untrue. Is this person on the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) or are they not?

I also wanted to learn more about these characters who had lives which were hinted at but never fully explored. Why was Kitty so adept at brandishing weapons, without hesitation? Why did they move to the United States? Why was Ryan so good at hacking (military grade websites mind you..)? What happened to Buck which made him have a m.249 Machine Gun? What happened with Seraphim? How did he meet Naomi? Was this persona hit-man in his past life or was he a vigilante? Why was Lee (Lucy’s dad) so oblivious to everything? This man was in active combat with everyone involved in the child abuse ring….you’re telling me he had no clue that all his ‘buddies’ were predators?

Who is this story for? Which audience would most profit from reading such a story? A story in which the sole reason behind the protagonist’s success is pure & utter luck. I mean, Lee had a snipper shot to the Chaplain but left it to go talk to him face-to-face? You’re telling me the person who had anger issues to boot, simply put away his gun to wander down a hill to speak with the person leading the physical abuse line-up against his daughter?

I will give credit where it is due however & state that I enjoyed the writing style. Johnson was able to employ a distance within the dialogue of his characters; a rift between who they were & who their trauma altered them to become. We were clearly able to see their struggle to maintain composure throughout the book which renders me to say that, I would read other books from the author in the future for this reason.

When all is said & done, I know that many people might appreciate this story for what it was at face value. Unfortunately, this was not a book which I found myself eager to read after the first couple of chapters made it apparent what we would be reading about. I am not the target audience by any means & therefore found it difficult to appreciate the race through the woods, the car crashes, the canoe & Buck & Lucy too.

Thank you to NetGalley, Polis Books, Agora Books, & Wayne Johnson for the free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

#TheRedCanoe #NetGalley

This was book was just okay. I enjoyed the writing style but I don’t think the plot was for me. I can see others enjoying this but for me it wasn’t my cup of tea.