Introduction

Set in Canada and the battlefields of France and Belgium, Three-Day Road is a mesmerizing novel told through the eyes of Niska—a Canadian Oji-Cree woman living off the land who is the last of a line of healers and diviners—and her nephew Xavier.

At the urging of his friend Elijah, a Cree boy raised in reserve schools, Xavier joins the war effort. Shipped off to Europe when they are nineteen, the boys are marginalized from the Canadian soldiers not only by their native appearance but also by the fine marksmanship that years of hunting in the bush has taught them. Both become snipers renowned for their uncanny accuracy. But while Xavier struggles to understand the purpose of the war and to come to terms with his conscience for the many lives he has ended, Elijah becomes obsessed with killing, taking great risks to become the most accomplished sniper in the army. Eventually the harrowing and bloody truth of war takes its toll on the two friends in different, profound ways. Intertwined with this account is the story of Niska, who herself has borne witness to a lifetime of death—the death of her people.

In part inspired by the legend of Francis Pegahmagabow, the great Indian sniper of World War I, Three-Day Road is an impeccably researched and beautifully written story that offers a searing reminder about the cost of war.

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Excerpt

Ekiiwaniwahk
Returning

For many days I've hidden in the bush by the town, coming out when I hear the call, watching carefully for him. This is an ugly town, far bigger than Moose Factory, even. This is a town I have not been to before, a place to which I will never return. More wemistikoshiw than I want to see walk the dusty streets in their funny clothes, dressed as if for colder weather, though the sun above us is high and full of summer heat. ... view entire excerpt...

Discussion Questions

Questions from the Publisher's Reading Guide:

1. Why does Joseph Boyden use two narrators to tell the story of Three Day Road? What effects does he create by interweaving Niska's and Xavier's narratives?


2. Niska tells Xavier about the stories her father told her family. “Sometimes his stories were all that we had to keep us alive” (p. 33). What role do stories play within the novel?

3. Why does Niska spend so much time telling Xavier stories of the past? Why does she say that she “feeds” him stories? What effect do her stories have on him?


4. Early in the novel, Thompson asks Elijah if he likes combat and killing, to which Elijah responds: “It's in my blood.” But Thompson doesn't ask Xavier, who thinks: “Does he sense something? How am I different?” (p. 69). How is Xavier different from Elijah? How do they each feel about combat and killing? In what ways are they alike?


5. Elijah has a dream in which three of his dead fellow soldiers tell him: “Do what you can. There is nothing sacred any more in a place such as this. Don't fight it. Do what you can” (p. 261). How does Elijah interpret this? Are these spirits right in suggesting that in war nothing is sacred and that a soldier should do whatever he can—even if it involves killing innocent people—to survive and win?


6. In what ways is it significant that Xavier and Elijah are Cree Indians? How do the Canadian soldiers perceive them? What aspects of their traditional ways of life affect how they perform during the war?


7. How does Niska begin to cure Xavier of his despair and morphine dependence? What does this cure suggest about the difference between Native American and Western views of medicine and healing?


8. Niska has the gift of receiving visions. What do her visions reveal to her? How do they guide her?


9. What does the novel as a whole say about war and what it can do to those who must kill in war? How are Elijah and Xavier changed, physically and spiritually, by their experiences in war?


10. In what ways is Three Day Road relevant to our own time and circumstance?

Weblinks

»	Publisher's Book Info
»	Publisher's Reading Group Guide

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