The novel is as much about the societal and cultural challenges facing this isolated northern community as it is about the plight of its protagonist… [Cathleen With] offers a fully realized and authentic narrator beset with tremendous personal and cultural obstacles. Trista’s deftly portrayed sense of delusion, despair and hope is ultimately both moving and unsettling.
— Devon Code, The National Post
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“[Trista’s voice is] a distinct, utterly compelling, really genuine voice. … I was really grateful to With for enabling us to be in that brain and for offering us a character oyu don’t often get to hear the voice of, which is a 15-year-old, half-Inuit half-White girl. [With] did a really good job of that.”
— Suzanne Hancock, Biblio-File on Radio Canada International
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The prose evokes cold climes, ghosts that haunt and forgive, sunless days and frozen bodies in the permafrost, but [Cathleen] With’s scenes foster a sense of faith—a confidence in survival, strong women, intuition and love.
— Megan Stewart, The Dominion
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[Cathleen With] balances Trista’s instability and crudeness of speech with a lyric sensibility…. The heightened language and the influence of native mythology are incorporated seamlessly into the narration, and deepen the novel without undermining the plausibility of Trista’s voice… [T]he emotional force of this novel is undeniable.”
— Katherine Wootton, Quill & Quire
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