A young woman holding her baby at night looks out the window into the darkness and witnesses what she believes to be a devastating act of violence occurring on the Break — a barren field on an isolated strip of land outside her house. Moving back and forth in time, The Break by Katherena Vermette is a harrowing story revealing the backstory to, and aftermath of, this incident; exploring the experiences, of the women in particular, of several Métis families in one small town in the North end of Winnipeg. The Métis are one of the three recognized Indigenous peoples in Canada, and Vermette herself is a Red River Métis (Michif) writer from Treaty 1 territory, the heart of the Métis Nation.

This intergenerational story captures the changing experiences through the generations but also the recurring cycles, and how the older women want better for those coming after them. Dark themes of violence perpetrated against women, prejudice, disregard for women’s opinions, alcoholism, homelessness, addiction, gang violence and devastating losses are contrasted with the fierce love the women have for each other, a fierce love flowing down through the generations and the strength many of them show in the face of such adversity, even when generational trauma has led them to self-destructive behaviour. The men in this story are often noted by their temporary or permanent absence, their unreliability or lack of support, and the traumas the women have endured often mean difficulties in sustaining healthy relationships. Hardened by circumstance, the older women feel like they can’t leave this place, this life, because this is all they have ever known.

There are so many characters in this that, rather than becoming drawn in by the development of one particular character, it’s the fleshing out of the families, the community as a whole, that moves the reader; the worry the women feel for each other, for their children, is palpable, and their love is what ultimately lifts what is a heavy novel. The writing is skillful, emotive and transportive, and I am definitely keen to read more by this author.

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The Break was published by House of Anansi Press in 2016.

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Katherena Vermette is a Métis writer from Treaty One territory, the heart of the Métis nation, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Her first book, North End Love Songs (The Muses Company), won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. Her NFB short documentary, this river, won the Coup de Coeur at the Montreal First Peoples Festival and a Canadian Screen Award. Her first novel, The Break, is the winner of three Manitoba Book Awards and the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and it was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and CBC Canada Reads.