Back Track

Brendan F.R. Edwards is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History
at the University of Saskatchewan.

Harold Johnson is a Cree writer, lawyer, and trapper. In this, his
second novel, the engaging story of four Cree brothers from northern
Saskatchewan is set against a backdrop of traditional Cree mythology.

Jimmy, the eldest brother, lives part of the year on his trapline, but
is haunted by loneliness and vivid dreams. Charles is a struggling
alcoholic who has recently found the will to live sober. Henry is a
southern-educated lawyer working as a public defender on the northern
Cree court circuit. And Edward is addicted to his work as a miner and
the uncomplicated isolation it provides him. When Jimmy is bitten by a
fox on the trapline and begins acting violently, his girlfriend Gladys
and his three brothers fear that he may be becoming a Wetiko (cannibal).

Set in the northern hub-city of La Ronge and the surrounding
wilderness, and centred on the crimes of Jimmy and the subsequent
manhunt that ensues, Back Track shares certain (acknowledged)
similarities with the real-life story of Albert Johnson, or the Mad
Trapper of Rat River. But unlike the retellings of the Mad Trapper’s
story, Johnson’s novel features a debate between mythic and medical
explanations for Jimmy’s behaviour, high-tech police tracking
techniques combined with traditional Cree methods, and intriguing
insight into the mind and actions of Jimmy, his family, and his
community. When the high-tech methods of the RCMP fail to locate Jimmy,
an elder is consulted; and as Jimmy’s behaviour becomes more and more
puzzling to his brothers and girlfriend, they too begin to search for
answers and solutions in the old Cree ways and stories.

Part crime drama and part retelling of traditional Cree myth, this
highly entertaining page-turner is enriched by Johnson’s exploration
of modern life and struggle in a northern community.