Hard Men and Hard Lives

Richard Wagamese's third novel , Dream Wheels, tells the story of a delinquent black youth and his mother who come into contact with a newly crippled but legendary First Nations bull rider and his prosperous ranch rodeo family. Both young men are wounded and angry and overwhelmed by loss, and the novel tells the story of how they come to teach and heal each other. Dream Wheels is also meant as a paean to rodeo and the rodeo cowboy, both of which Wagamese treats in terms bordering on the mythological. Although there are plenty of western novels out there, from the endless Louis L’Amour series to Cormac McCarthy’s startling books, many of which extol the virtues of the cowboy ideal of manhood, Wagamese’s approach is an original one in that he combines that idea of manliness with First Nations teachings, and rests them both solidly on the imperative of a true relationship with land.

The story is chiefly about that western code of manhood, and how Joe...