The trickster [Hardcover]

In a remote town high in the Canadian Rockies, some mysterious and terrible killer is on the loose. Mutilated bodies appear in the snow, with no human footprints nearby. For Sam Hunt, this is especially terrifying -- Sam has been having blackouts, waking up miles from home, with blood on his face and no idea what he's been doing... --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

A seamless fusion of the supernatural and the psychological distinguishes this page-turning first novel, an impressive distillation of the Native Canadian experience. When a series of brutal murders rocks the snowbound Canadian town of Silver, suspicion falls on Sam Hunt (ne Hunting Wolf), a Kinchuinick Sioux who can't account for his actions or whereabouts during the blackouts that have recently afflicted him. Sam's renunciation of his tribal heritage years earlier in order to escape his abusive reservation upbringing has left him full of self-loathing and vulnerable to the mythical Trickster, a demonic "mirror that would kill its own reflection," who is channeling Sam's suppressed anger to wreak vengeance on the human race. Scottish writer Gray suspensefully intercuts scenes of the Trickster's gruesome mischief and Sam's painful self-examination with parallel events from the turn of the century, when Sam's shaman ancestor saved a town of disbelieving white folk from the Trickster's exploits and created a burden of family duty that Sam must now fulfill if he is to protect his family and friends. Although the narrative sprawls across nearly a century of history and the experiences of a vivid and varied cast of characters, Gray neatly frames its dramatic high points in terms of tensions between the white and Kinchuinick cultures. Her poignant rendering of Sam's identity crisis reflects those tensions and provides a compelling portrait of a man in the grip of forces beyond his control. Tersely plotted and richly laced with Sioux lore, this novel marks an auspicious fiction debut. Major ad/promo.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.