Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice

I’ll ask Auntie to re-bead this later this fall, he thought. He ran his thumb across the small beaded pattern in the middle, feeling where the beads were missing in the simple bear design. He brought it up to just below his chest and balanced it in the centre of his palm. Evan reached into the right pocket of his cargo pants and pulled out a small leather pouch faded and smooth from years of wear. The eyes were open, vacant, and the bull’s long tongue flopped out onto the grass. Food from the South was expensive and never as good, or as satisfying, as the meat he could bring in himself.īy the time Evan reached the moose moments later, it was dead.

The fall hunt was drawing to a close, and he still wanted to put more food away. He had been out since early morning and had been tracking this particular bull since around noon.

His grey boots pushed through the yellowing grass of the glade. The smell of gunpowder briefly dominated the crisp scent of impending winter. Evan Whitesky stood and looped his rifle around his right shoulder, adjusted his neon orange hat, and began a slow walk over to his kill. In the near distance, a large bull moose fell to its side. He has won the Independent Publishers Book Award and the Anishinabek Nation’s Debwewin Citation for excellence in First Nation Storytelling.Ī crack echoed through the boreal landscape, a momentary chaos in the still afternoon air. Waubgeshig Rice is an author and journalist from the Wasauksing First Nation. As visitors arrive from the crumbling south, causing chaos, Evan Whitesky emerges as an unlikely leader. A small northern Anishinaabe community goes dark as winter looms. The following is from Waubgeshig Rice's novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow.

Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice