Books by Katherena Vermette

The Break

by Katherena Vermette, Pietro Grossi

Winner of the Amazon.ca First Novel Award and a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award, The Break is a stunning and heartbreaking debut novel about a multigenerational Métis–Anishnaabe family dealing with the fallout of a shocking crime in Winnipeg’s North End.
When Stella, a young Métis mother, looks out her window one evening and spots someone in trouble on the Break ― a barren field on an isolated strip of land outside her house ― she calls the police to alert them to a possible crime.
In a series of shifting narratives, people who are connected, both directly and indirectly, with the victim ― police, family, and friends ― tell their personal stories leading up to that fateful night. Lou, a social worker, grapples with the departure of her live-in boyfriend. Cheryl, an artist, mourns the premature death of her sister Rain. Paulina, a single mother, struggles to trust her new partner. Phoenix, a homeless teenager, is released from a youth detention centre. Officer Scott, a Métis policeman, feels caught between two worlds as he patrols the city. Through their various perspectives a larger, more comprehensive story about lives of the residents in Winnipeg’s North End is exposed.
A powerful intergenerational family saga, The Break showcases Vermette’s abundant writing talent and positions her as an exciting new voice in Canadian literature.

The Break

by Katherena Vermette, Pietro Grossi

Dino is a placid, unambitious man. Living in a small provincial town, his only passion is billiards—he spends his evenings honing his technique. One day, however, Dino’s quiet life is interrupted—his wife falls pregnant. This is the first in a series of events that shake him from his slumber and force Dino to test himself for the first time.

Red River Resistance (A Girl Called Echo, 2) (Volume 2)

by Katherena Vermette

Echo Desjardins is adjusting to her new home, finding friends, and learning about Métis history. She just can’t stop slipping back and forth in time. One ordinary afternoon in class, Echo finds herself transported to the banks of the Red River in the summer of 1869. All is not well in the territory as Canadian surveyors have arrived to change the face of territory, and Métis families, who have lived there for generations, are losing access to their land. As the Resistance takes hold, Echo fears for her friends and the future of her people in the Red River Valley.

The Girl and the Wolf

by Katherena Vermette

While picking berries with her mother, a little girl wanders too far into the woods. When she realizes she is lost, she begins to panic. A large grey wolf makes a sudden appearance between some distant trees. Using his sense of smell, he determines where she came from and decides to help her. Through a series of questions from the wolf, the little girl realizes she had the knowledge and skill to navigate herself―she just needed to remember that those abilities were there all along.

This Place 150 Years Retold

by David Robertson, Richard Van Camp, Katherena Vermette, Kateri Akiwenzie-Damm, Sonny Assu, Brandon Mitchell, Rachel Qitsualik-Tinsley, Jen Storm, Sean Qitsualik-Tinsley, Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair, Chelsea Vowel

Explore the last 150 years through the eyes of Indigenous creators in the graphic novel anthology, This Place: 150 Years Retold.
Watch for new stories and familiar characters:

• Métis businesswoman Annie Bannatyne and Louis Riel
• Oka Crisis, Meech Lake Accord, and Kelowna Accord
• the Berger Inquiry into the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline
• Jack Fiddler, an Anishinaabe shaman charged as a serial killer
• Rosie, an Inuk girl coming of age during WWII
• wâpanacâhkos, an Indigenous woman sent back from the future to the early 2000s
• fishing raids and salmon wars in Listuguj, Quebec
• Francis Pegahmagabow, WWI sniper and veterans' rights activist
• the impact of the Sixties Scoop and the child welfare system
• Chief Billy Assu and the potlatch bans in British Columbia

River Woman

by Katherena Vermette

"Governor General's Award-winning Mâetis poet and acclaimed novelist Katherena Vermette's second work of poetry, river woman, examines and celebrates love as postcolonial action. Here love is defined as a force of reclamation and repair in times of trauma, and trauma is understood to exist within all times. The poems are grounded in what feels like an eternal present, documenting moments of clarity that lift the speaker (and reader) out of our preconceptions of historical time, while never losing a connection to history. This is what we mean when we describe a work of art as being "timeless." Like the river they speak to, these poems return again and again to the same source in search of new ways to reconstruct what has been lost. Vermette suggests that it's through language and the body - particularly through language as it lives inside the body - that a fragmented self might resurface as once again whole. This idea of breaking apart and coming back together is woven throughout the collection as the speaker revels in the physical pleasures of learning Anishnaabemowin ("the language / I should have already known"), as she contemplates the ongoing negotiation between the natural world and urban structures, and as she finds herself falling into trust with the ones she loves. Divided into four sections, and written in her distinctively lean and elegantly spare style, where short lines belie the depth within them, river woman explores Vermette's relationship to nature - its destructive power and beauty, its timelessness, and its place in human history. Here is a poet who is a keen observer of an environment that is both familiar and otherworldly, where her home is alive with the sounds and smells of the land it grows out of, where "Words / transcend ceremony / into everyday" and "Nothing / is inanimate."--

Procession

by Katherena Vermette

procession: a line of people moving in the same direction; a formal ceremony or celebration, as in a wedding, a funeral, a religious parade. Bestselling novelist and Governor General's Award-winning poet katherena vermette's third collection presents a series of poems reaching into what it means to be (at once) a descendant and a future ancestor, exploring the connections we have with one another and ourselves, amongst friends, and within families and Nations.

In frank, heartfelt poems that move through body sovereignty and ancestral dreams, and from '80s childhood nostalgia to welcoming one's own babies, vermette unreels the story of a child, a parent, and soon, an elder, living in a prairie place that has always existed, though it looks much different to her now. This book is about being one small part of a large genealogy. A lineage is a line, and the procession, whether in celebration or in mourning, is ongoing.