Cherie Dimaline wrote the first draft of The Marrow Thieves in just six weeks. As she shared with viewers of last week’s Dal Reads event, “it was this furious six-week period where I sat down and wrote what became the book — it was really, truly just a love letter to our young people, asking them to stay with us.”
That sense of purpose helped her write a best seller, one that earned a Governor General's Literary Award and the 2018 Sunburst Award for young adult fiction.
Watch the recording of the author talk (for the Dalhousie community only).
A future that mirrors the past
Chosen last year as the 2020/21 Dal Reads book, 2017's The Marrow Thieves follows an Indigenous teenager who is on the run from recruiters hunting 
Indigenous people to harvest their bone marrow, which holds their ability to dream, something the rest of the population is no longer able to do. He gathers others along the way who join him in the struggle to survive.
In conversation with Samantha Adema, Dal’s Indigenous Services Librarian, Dimaline (pictured left) explained that though her story is futuristic, it has deep roots in the past.
“To create dystopian fiction, you create a character or characters that are lovable, that you love and then put them through the worst thing you can imagine,” she said. “And when I was thinking about it, I honestly couldn't think of anything worse than what had already happened. Really, truly Indigenous people are the best people to create this kind of fiction because we have survived an apocalypse. There is this blueprint built into our stories.”
Sparking discussions
Each year, Dal Reads brings the Dalhousie community together through the shared experience of reading the same book. In some cases, faculty include the book in their course curriculum and there are often events and programming related to the book.
In addition to the author talk, the book was discussed at a pedagogical roundtable last month featuring Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences faculty members Andrew Brown, Brian Gillis, Aiden Tait and Erin Wunker, with Margaret Robinson moderating. Watch the recording of the roundtable.
And it inspired a presentation called Moving Through Trauma: Indigenous Futurism, Survivance, and the Apocalypse in The Marrow Thieves with Tiffany Morris, a student writing her thesis on the topic at Acadia University. Watch the recording of the presentation.
Adapting to the times
Dal Libraries Communications Coordinator Marlo MacKay, who has been chairing Dal Reads since 2014, says the pandemic made this year’s Dal Reads a bit more logistically challenging.
“We wanted to ensure the e-book was accessible to the whole community,” she recalls. “It took months to negotiate the license, but our great Resources team made it happen and we were all eventually able to read together, from wherever we were.” Read the e-book.
The next chapter
As last week’s author talk was ending, Adema asked if there would be a sequel. To the delight of event viewers, Dimaline confirmed that a sequel is set to be published in the fall and then shared an excerpt from the upcoming book.
As for Dal Reads, watch for the 2021/22 book selection to be announced sometime later this spring.