Review Of Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves
At first look, the book is by all seems tragic fiction swarming with adventure and risk; however, it has a deeper meaning for people learning history. The book narrates the story of the main character Francis who is on the run from the recruiters which represented Canada’s Department of Oneirology. The Recruiters were on a hunt for the Inuit, Métis, and First Nations peoples, unwilling taking them to factories to remove their bone marrow which carried the dreams. This was done in view of the fact that they had lost their ability to dream with the exception of Indigenous people, due to the trauma and shock they had been in for losing their lands and watching million people die on the grounds of global warming.
Global warming had affected a lot of people, as it causes the cities to flood, hurricanes, Earthquakes and the melting of ice. Being the central character, Francis is separated from the heroics of his brother who is taken by the recruiters, He tries to survive on his own. On the road he meets other group Indigenous people consisting of mainly teenagers and two adults who are on the run similarly led by Miigwans. They keep moving along the way to be off the radar with very limited resources. They stay alive by hunting and finding unpolluted and not poisoned drinkable water. The leader of that group would share with them the history such as treaties, colonization and the abuse committed in the residential school. The plot twists when one of the elder is captured, not only the capturing affected them a lot but the knowledge which the elder had about how to live, language, and how to function had been taken away. This triggered the desperate attempt to rescue the elder.
Later on, Francis coincidently meets his father who lives near Espanola with the Indigenous council and is informed about the expiring of his mom by the recruiters is the bone marrow process. They experience a lot of action and emotions on the way, with Francis falling in love with Rose who was very brave and adventurer, eventually taking oaths together to keep each other for the rest of their life.
The book is written in a chronological fashion with flashbacks of events on the way, connecting to the ongoing situations. There is mixture of action, romance and suspense in the book. I would give a rating of 4/5 as it keeps the reader interested to know what is going to happen next, it also references what could happen in the near future if powerful people did not have something normal people could have, such as in the book it is about dreams and in reality it could be something else. It has been very well written with a clear message of Hope, as the writer quotes “And I understood that as long as there are dreamers left, there will never be want for a dream”. This made me understand no matter how hard the situation and circumstances, there is always light at the end of the tunnel and its just a matter of time till you see it.
