Hunting by Stars
Hunting by Stars
In a circle of pines, I found a tall maple covered in new vines, neon and muscular in their infancy. It took me longer than usual to scale the trunk. I was out of practice. But tearing the green climbers and grunting through the flex, I made it to a branch high enough and strong enough to offer a good view while holding me up. The trees always held me up. I was better out here. I took a moment to feel the space I filled.
People used to seek out the abandoned. My father had told us about that. “They’d take road trips and pay money to go on tours. Shut-down parks, old mansions, falling-down buildings, and a whole Russian city ruined by a nuclear accident. They wanted so bad to be in that intimate space, close to nothing.”
I think now that they just wanted to be in a place that looked like how the world really was. They wanted proof that we were alone in a crowd. That the world had quickly pushed us into little cubicles so we could cause minimal damage and then gave us stupid shit to amuse ourselves with: games, toys, politics.
I wondered if those tourists saw the truth of an abandoned place. That it was fuller than a mall, more bustling than an old freeway. Because the Earth didn’t stutter. It moved ahead, smooth and elegant, and uncoiled its fingers into every last place, hooking nails under crook and groove. Now so much of the country was abandoned, and we had never lived in a more crowded space.
Global warming has almost ruined the planet, and people are no longer able to dream. The exception is Indigenous people whose bone marrow holds the cure to dreamlessness. They are unwilling donors and are hunted down and captured by recruiters. French, 17, is now imprisoned, held in a dark residential school room, far away from anyone who might help. All he can do is imagine ways of escaping back into the forest and reuniting with his family.
His newfound family members, meanwhile, are doing their best to create a community by supporting one another and retaining their culture. And, of course, they are protecting themselves and others from being hunted down by the Recruiters who would happily capture them in order to harvest their bone marrow in order to treat non-Indigenous people. Rescuing French is now one of their main priorities.
Hunting by Stars takes up the story of The Marrow Thieves, and readers will recognize many of the Indigenous characters. In this novel, Dimaline gives more substance to the Recruiters and those working in the system of the residential schools.
French is an excellent main character who matures due to the many difficult decisions he must make. Escaping capture means pretending to join the Recruiters’ side and working for their system. While French is willing to swallow his pride and do this, he knows it will make him appear to be a traitor and he is likely to be misunderstood by his family if and when they are reunited. His decisions literally involve living and dying, and he is pressured to come to grips with just what he will and will not do to ensure his freedom and that of his family. Do the ends truly justify the means?
The other Indigenous characters fill out the story, and chapters are told from their various points of view so that readers come to know their individual stories and understand their personalities. This technique for introducing secondary characters is confusing at the beginning, but eventually each individual takes shape. For those who read The Marrow Thieves and are familiar with the characters, the process is much easier. Of this cast of characters, Rose has one of the most important roles in the book since she is determined to rescue French without waiting for the rest of the family to come to a decision and act. The love interest between French and Rose adds yet another dimension to the story.
The novel is set in a dystopian world, and the author provides a suspense-filled story. At some points, readers will wonder who, if anyone, will survive. The tension is continuous, the adventure is thrilling and the pace of the novel is very fast. All of this is set against a background of high emotions - love and hope in some cases or sadness and anger in others. Readers will be on a roller coaster which features both Indigenous resistance and resilience in the face of the marrow harvesting ‘machine’ .
Hunting by Stars is, by times, grim and gritty and, by times, hopeful and positive. There are sections dealing with topics, such as abuse, grief and death, which may be difficult for some readers. Dimaline deals with such huge topics as colonialism, racism, and inequality and the immense challenges they bring. The whole is set in a future post-apocalyptic world which seems foreign to us and yet also all too real given current concerns about climate change. The themes are timely as we confront recent tragic discoveries, such as the mass graves at residential schools across Canada. Readers see characters battling other characters, characters battling the injustices of society and also characters battling nature, itself. Woven through the text are themes of oppression, social justice and the need to rebuild society and start afresh. The novel deals with the difficult philosophical question of what it means to be human, and the author illustrates her thesis with the group of caring and committed Indigenous characters she has created. These large and complicated ideas will appeal to adult readers as well as the target audience of young adults.
There is much to learn from Hunting by Stars as well as much to enjoy while reading it. There are warm and tender moments as well as harsh reminders of residential schools and the effects of societal carelessness in allowing global warming to become irreversible. It is both heart-breaking and heart-warming and is a ‘must read’ on my list! Indigenous readers as well as non-native readers will think about the themes and the characters long after they close the cover and may imagine meeting French and the others in yet another instalment of this intriguing story.
Ann Ketcheson, a retired high school teacher-librarian and classroom teacher of English and French, lives in Ottawa, Ontario.