Winner of the 2014 Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction!
This is Thomas King's first literary novel in 15 years and follows on
the success of the award-winning and best-selling The Inconvenient
Indian and his beloved Green Grass, Running Water and Truth and
Bright Water, both of which continue to be taught in Canadian schools
and universities. Green Grass, Running Water is widely considered a
contemporary Canadian classic.
In The Back of the Turtle, Gabriel returns to Smoke River, the reserve
where his mother grew up and to which she returned with Gabriel's
sister. The reserve is deserted after an environmental disaster killed
the population, including Gabriel's family, and the wildlife. Gabriel, a
brilliant scientist working for Domidion, created GreenSweep, and
indirectly led to the crisis. Now he has come to see the damage and to
kill himself in the sea. But as he prepares to let the water take him,
he sees a young girl in the waves. Plunging in, he saves her, and soon
is saving others. Who are these people with their long black hair and
almond eyes who have fallen from the sky?
Filled with brilliant characters, trademark wit, wordplay, and a
thorough knowledge of native myth and story-telling, this novel is a
masterpiece by one of our most important writers.
