Wagamese’s final novel ‘ultimately uplifting’
Starlight picks up where the Indigenous writer’s previous novel, Medicine Walk, left off
When author Richard Wagamese died in 2017, at the age of 61, he was on the cusp of attracting an international readership that, no doubt, would have received his work with as much warmth and respect as his Canadian readers have. Wagamese’s writing has that effect. There is a rare open-heartedness that never wanes into sentimentality and a generosity of spirit that is unafraid to confront the worst humanity has to offer.
And the prose, especially in his later novels, is superb — it is no stretch to include Indian Horse (2012) and Medi
cine Walk (2014) in a shortlist of the best Canadian novels of the past 10 years.
Both novels draw heavily on Wagamese’s own experiences and those of his extended Ojibwa family, who lived the horrors of the residential school system and its generational fallout. Although Wagamese’s parents survived the schools, he was snatched away from them when he was 2 years old by Children’s Aid. He bounced around often abusive foster homes until he finally escaped as a teenager, beginning a long period of periodic homelessness and addiction.
Readers can take some solace in the fact that, when he died, Wagamese had almost finished a novel that drew on the same wealth of autobiographical material that engendered his best fiction. That unfinished novel, Starlight, has just been published and, despite a few missing chapters, it is a worthy addition to his oeuvre.
Starlight picks up the story that began in Medicine Walk. At least a decade has passed since 16-year-old Frank Starlight helped his alcoholic father die and make a ragged peace with the son he abandoned. Frank has since taken over the farm in the B.C. Interior left to him by “the old man,” the kindly white farmer who took him in as a boy.
Frank lives a quiet existence of hard work and contemplation of the natural world with his good friend and hired hand Roth.
Frank’s love of the wild spaces beyond the farm’s borders, and the creatures who make it their home, has also gifted him with a lucrative vocation as a wildlife photographer.
The men’s established routines are upset when Frank sees a mother (Emmy) and her daughter, Winnie, nabbed for shoplifting at the local grocery store. Frank gets the charges dropped by agreeing to hire Emmy as a housekeeper and provide housing for her and Winnie. He does this knowing that Emmy is on the run from her abusive boyfriend.
What none of them know is that the boyfriend, who Emmy seriously injured during her escape, has vowed to track her down and murder her. The novel’s parallel narratives — Emmy and Winnie’s new life on the farm and the wild spaces beyond, and the psychotic boyfriend’s relentless quest for revenge — eventually merge, as they must. Wagamese’s notes reveal how the last few chapters would have played out.
That missing ending aside, Starlight feels fully formed. The evocation of the B.C. landscape is masterful and elegant, and Frank and Roth’s masculine banter provides a fine comic counterpoint to the burgeoning romance between Frank and the emotionally shattered Emmy.
The prose is both musical and hardedged, bending to match the rhythms of life in the wild, on the farm and in the desolate skid-row bars of distant cities.
A captivating and ultimately uplifting read, and the last we’ll enjoy from one of our best writers.