The Marrow Thieves

AUTHOR

Cherie Dimaline

Cherie Dimaline is a Métis author and editor whose award-winning fiction has been published and anthologized internationally. Her novels include Red Rooms, The Girl Who Grew A Galaxy, A Gentle Habit, The Marrow Thieves and Empire of Wild. In 2014, she was named the Emerging Artist of the Year at the Ontario Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, and became the first Indigenous Writer in Residence for the Toronto Public Library. Her young adult novel The Marrow Thieves has won the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Kirkus Prize, the Burt Award for First Nations, Métis and Inuit Literature and was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award and, among other honors, was a fan favorite in the 2018 edition of CBC’s Canada Reads. It was also a Book of the Year on numerous lists including NPR, School Library Journal, the New York Public Library, the Globe & Mail, Quill & Quire and the CBC. From the Georgian Bay Métis Community in Ontario, she now lives in Vancouver.

Reviews

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– Kirkus Reviews

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– American Indians in Children’s Literature

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– Quill & Quire

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– School Library Journal, starred review

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– Sunburst Award Jury Citation

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– YA Cafe Podcast

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– Citizen’s Press

“A book of bravery, sacrifice, and perseverance. … the strong message, characters, and plot made for an exciting book that will leave an impact on anyone who reads it. Happy reading!”

“Dimaline single-handedly flips the dystopia genre on its head with her runaway hit, The Marrow Thieves, a gritty coming-of-age story in which Indigenous people are hunted for their dream-containing, world-saving bone marrow in a landscape ravaged by climate collapse and madness. A deftly woven and brutal tale of colonialism and environmental neglect but also of community, culture, resilience and hope. Inventive, rich, important.”
– 49th Shelf

“In The Marrow Thieves’ dystopian Canada, irreparably marred by climate change, humanity has grown so traumatized that only Indigenous people retain the ability to dream. So the government is kidnapping them and harvesting their bone marrow in a desperate, mysterious effort to make white people’s REM cycles great again. It’s a jarring allegory for North America’s colonial past and a global future that looks more precarious every day, and one that Cherie Dimaline, a member of the Métis Nation of Ontario, gracefully unfurls in her 2017 novel. But The Marrow Thieves, a winner of the Kirkus Prize and Canada’s prestigious Governor General’s Award, isn’t just a political statement. It’s also a riveting, adventure-packed coming-of-age story whose orphaned hero, an Indigenous 16-year-old boy known as Frenchie, makes an arduous northward journey to what he and his companions hope will be relative safety, and finds community and culture in the face of violence and dehumanization.”

– Time

“Dimaline’s terrific writing is taut, energetic and confident, filled with empathy and poetry.”