Richard Wagamese published Medicine Walk in 2014. Wagamese was an acclaimed First Nations Ojibway author most notably known for his novel Indian Horse, which was adapted into a film in 2017.
Medicine Walk is told from the perspective of Franklin Starlight, a 16-year-old Ojibway and Cree boy living in the backcountry of British Columbia. The novel oscillates between Franklin’s stories and the stories about of his dying father, Eldon Starlight, as told to Franklin on their journey to bury Eldon. Eldon has been largely absent for Frank’s life due to his drinking, and Frank was mostly raised by his white foster father. The novel is a testament to the burden of intergenerational trauma and the meaning of fatherhood, as Frank attempts to come to terms with his father’s neglect and alcoholism during Eldon’s final days. Medicine Walk shows the interweaving of the pain of biological father, foster father, and son; in turn, the novel demonstrates the possibility for mutual healing through connections to the land and the sharing of stories.
Medicine Walk was published just three years before Wagamese’s untimely death in 2017, and the novel received the 2015 Banff Mountain Book Festival Grand Award. Medicine Walk can be seen as a reflection on Wagamese’s own struggles with addiction and his abandonment by his biological parents when he was young. Wagamese’s final novel, Starlight, was published posthumously in 2018. Starlight is the unfinished sequel to Medicine Walk, and is thematically similar to Medicine Walk in its discussion of characters healing through the land.
