Three Day Road is a novel of loss. Joseph Boyden, who divides his time between Northern Ontario and New Orleans, has set his book mainly in France during the trench fighting of World War I. In it, two young Cree men, Elijah and Xavier, become famous among the Canadian troops for their skill as snipers. After the war, Xavier returns to Canada broken in body and spirit. His aunt, Niska, the Oji-Cree woman who had raised him, meets him at the train station in what is referred to only as “the town.” She was the last of her group to live off the land by traditional skills. She had been told it was Elijah who was returning, and that her nephew was dead. Xavier had been told that Niska was dead.
This is a courageous novel. It is told in interleaved passages. Most are from the trenches of France, but interspersed with scenes from Elijah and Xavier’s early lives. Each was educated by nuns, and each later escaped. As adolescents the two became friends who hunted...
Keith Oatley is professor emeritus of cognitive psychology at the University of Toronto, a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and winner of the 1994 Commonwealth Prize for Best First Novel. His most recent novel, Therefore Choose, was published in 2010 by Goose Lane. His recent books on Psychology include Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction (Wiley 2011) and The Passionate Muse: Exploring Emotion in Stories (Oxford University Press 2012). He wishes to thank his colleagues Maja Djikic, Jacob Hirsch, Raymond Mar, Jennifer de la Paz, Jordan Peterson and Sara Zoeterman.
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