The Great Dog Sled Race

Steve Pitt is a Toronto-based freelance writer and an award-winning journalist. He has written many young adult and children's books, including Day of the Flying Fox: The True Story of World War II Pilot Charley Fox.

This series by Bernard Palmer takes young-adult fiction in a slightly
different direction. Palmer’s books are tales told from an evangelical
Christian First Nations point of view. Volumes 3, 4, and 5 revolve
around the Yazzie clan, a large family living on an unnamed reserve in
northern Saskatchewan. Robert, Louis, and Tawana Yazzie are teenage
siblings who live with their grandparents. Their mother, Rita, is an
alcoholic who disappears for weeks at a time. Their father, Frank, is a
Navajo originally from New Mexico.

In Volume 3, The Great Dog Sled Race, the Yazzies struggle with
problems while trying to put together a winning dogsled team for the
annual competition. Robert, a Christian, worries about his brother
Louis, who often skips school to drink or sniff solvents. Their sister,
Tawana, is trying to help her friend Tanya, who is running with a bad
crowd. Their lives are further complicated by the unexpected arrival of
Frank, their hard-drinking and estranged father, who has come home to
recuperate after being hurt at work.

In Volume 4, The Case of the Strange Pottery, the Yazzies visit their
relatives in New Mexico for the first time. Frank has become a Christian
and has returned home to make amends for wrongs he committed when he was
a young man. Tawana tries to help her cousin Zena resist the temptations
of alcohol, drugs, and easy sex. The Yazzies find their Christian
beliefs challenged when their friend Grant appears to be involved in a
forgery scheme with an unsavory white man named Hunter.

In Volume 5, The Case of the Innocent Magpie, Robert and Louis find
themselves saddled with two unlovable tourists from Toronto, while
Tawana goes to Winnipeg to hide after being nearly raped by two
strangers near her home. When a diamond ring goes missing from the local
tourist hotel, Louis suddenly finds himself being questioned by the
Tribal Police. Louis swears he is innocent, but the evidence against him
looks very incriminating.

Palmer does not flinch from writing about the turbulence of life on an
isolated reserve. Unfortunately, his characters who live there are
somewhat two-dimensional. The non-Christians tend to lie, steal, smoke,
drink, fornicate, or sniff solvents, while the Christians do not. Each
book could desperately use at least one decent non-Christian and a good
Christian who also happened to be a first-rate pain in the neck. Not a
first-choice purchase.