The time travelling alternates with Echo’s life in a foster home and at a new school.
It begins with a young girl looking out across a beautiful vista
of the Qu’Appelle Valley (now called Saskatchewan). She connects with
a group of Metis who are at their summer camp hunting and preserving buffalo.
This first episode was triggered during her history class.
This beginning, and great swathes of the rest of book are without
text. The intense isolation and loneliness of Echo’s day to day life is
portrayed powerfully in wordless frames that show her moving from class to
class at school, and then heading to her room when she returns to her foster
home. Most of the story is conveyed in the gorgeous images alone.
The book concludes with Echo meeting with her mother having a conversation about their Metis roots with the words, "to be concluded…." at the bottom of the page. This ending felt abrupt and incomplete. It left me feeling irritated. The next book in the series, Red River Resistance, will be published in September. I am looking forward to it and hope, even if it is merely a continuation of the series, that the ending is more satisfying.
For readers who want to know more about this aspect of Canadian
history, there is a timeline at the end of the book that outlines significant
events. There is also a recipe for pemmican.
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