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Indigenous Stories
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Sign up todayKiss of the Fur Queen
Narrator
Patricia Cano
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Length
9 hours 52 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“We have print copies of Kiss of the Fur Queen in the store but I tell customers they should listen to the audio version. There is a musical thread throughout—in the language, the piano, the northern woods, and on the stage–and Patricia Cano captures it all in her telling. The Cree language, the laughter, the brotherly love. Kiss of the Fur Queen is the story of two Cree boys from Mystic Lake in northern Manitoba who are sent away to attend boarding school. Tomson Highway does not look away from the abuse by the priests—putting it squarely in the center for everything to come. The Okimasis brothers go from boarding school to Winnipeg and each make their way leaning into one another and the arts that sustain them—Jeremiah on piano, Gabriel through dance. In the end, it is their culture, language, and early childhood memories they return to over and again.”
— Julie • Honest Dog Books
Born into a magical Cree world in snowy northern Manitoba, Champion and Ooneemeetoo Okimasis are all too soon torn from their family and thrust into the hostile world of a Catholic residential school. Their language is forbidden, their names are changed to Jeremiah and Gabriel, and both boys are abused by priests.
As young men, estranged from their own people and alienated from the culture imposed upon them, the Okimasis brothers fight to survive. Wherever they go, the Fur Queen--a wily, shape-shifting trickster--watches over them with a protective eye. For Jeremiah and Gabriel are destined to be artists. Through music and dance they soar.
TOMSON HIGHWAY is a Cree from Brochet, in northern Manitoba. He is the celebrated author of the plays The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, both of which won Dora Mavor Moore Awards and Floyd S. Chalmers Awards. He has written three children's books, been nominated for many awards, holds ten honorary degrees, and is a member of the Order of Canada.
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Reviews
"Tomson Highway's prose is beautiful, lyrical. . . . Emotionally complex, witty, symphonic and sad, Kiss of the Fur Queen is a remarkable novel, filled with blood and guts, life and love." —The Vancouver Sun"Kiss of the Fur Queen is a novel of affirmation . . . a book full of feeling for the North [that] displays startling human insight. . . . A novel that dances with life." —The Globe and Mail
"Highway's depiction of the brothers' trapline births are among the most haunting and evocative pieces of writing to ever appear in Canadian literature. The playful yet hallowed tone of these early passages is pure magic. . . . The novel remains, at its core, a celebration of survival and of life lived." —Quill & Quire
"In a book that is both hard-hitting and whimsical, [Tomson Highway] offers a soulful look into the often transient nature of identity." —National Post
"Tomson Highway's first novel is made poignant by its passion and pain, but it is rendered charming and magical by a title character conjured up as a fatal beauty. . . . An affecting tale [of] fine satiric sense and linguistic play." —Toronto Star
"Kiss of the Fur Queen is, above all, a deeply personal statement. . . . The writing is superb in this book. . . . Reading [Highway's] prose often gives one the feeling of looking through a spiritual veil. . . . A born story-teller and entertainer." —The Star Phoenix
"[Kiss of the Fur Queen] pulses with life and humour and manages to meld the conventional English novel format with free-flowing fantastical native stories to create a new art form—a sort of Salinger on snowshoes. . . . [Highway has] a way of making words sound like music." —Times Colonist
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