Let me be clear, it's a dark read. It's about war and addiction and trauma and loss and aloneness. It doesn't, or perhaps really can't, do much to rehabilitate what occurred during World War I, but it does make a run at friendship and recovery and healing.
My reading experience has been pretty lacking in the Native American and First Peoples department. I read Killers of the Flower Moon a few years ago, The Painted Drum, and The Light in the Forest way back in the early grades. (I don't think The Indian in the Cupboard counts.) I have a few others on my list: Braiding Sweetgrass and some more Louise Erdrich are high up there.
This all is a way of saying that I don't have much experience with writing about native peoples of the Americas, so I didn't quite know what to expect from Three Day Road. And even now that I've read it, I'm certainly not qualified to judge the cultural aspects. I can say, though, that the story is told from two points of view - there's "Nephew" Xavier, who goes off to fight in WWI with his best friend Elijah, and there's "Auntie" Niska, who stays back in the Canadian woods, living in the old way. The difference in their two outlooks, experiences, and voices is appreciated as a novice to the subject. More perspectives equal more information, and they both feel genuine and true to their respective characters.
The book opens with Auntie retrieving Xavier at the train station when he returns from war. Elijah is not with him, and Xavier, who has lost a leg and been shot in the arm, is badly addicted to morphine. Auntie has no idea what has happened to him during the years he was away. She doesn't know where Elijah is, and Xavier can't bear to think about it. As the two of them leave the train station and she paddles them back towards home in her canoe, Xavier relives his wartime experiences in flashbacks. To bring him back to her, Auntie tries to counter his dark daydreams and nightmares with stories from her childhood and his. But the question remains: what happened to Elijah? The answer comes out, but I don't want to spoil it for you.
It took me a little while to get into this one, probably 50 pages, but once I got there, I was hooked.
