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Eden Robinson. Blood Sports.

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Eden Robinson. Blood Sports. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2006. 288 pp. $21.00 sc.

Richard Wagamese. Dream Wheels. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 2006.416 pp. $21.00 sc.

Since 1983 novels by Canadian First Nations and Metis authors have formed a substantial, expanding, and satisfying category. Eden Robinson's second novel, Blood Sports, and Richard Wagamese's third novel, Dream Wheels, form part of 2006's contribution. At first reading, the two novels seem poles apart. Blood Sports is the sort of work always described as "gritty" a violent quasi-thriller set mostly in Vancouver's downtown Eastside during the years (though this is never mentioned) a serial killer casually murdered the "working" women of the area. Although the neighbourhood is largely Aboriginal, the characters are catalogued as "Caucasian" in the transcripts of videotapes that form one of the many narrative strands that crisscross to form the novel. In contrast, Dream Wheels is a cowboy novel set primarily on an idyllic British Columbia ranch, where an attractive cast of black, white, Sioux, Ojibway, and mixed-blood characters meet to effect the healing of two young men, one an Indian cowboy and the other an inner-city black youth. Although the storyline shifts from character to character without transitions, it is basically chronological and combines dialogue and third-person narrative. While Blood...

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