Strangers by David A. Robertson

I’ve been on the hunt for a new Indigenous novel that would work for a grade 9, which led me to Strangers by David A. Robertson. It has an engaging premise: a teenage boy returns home to his reserve after a decade of living in Winnipeg, summoned by his old friend via a series of urgent texts. The novel is framed as a murder mystery, but has a number of other layers, including a pandemic, a conspiracy, and supernatural beings like omniscient shapeshifting coyotes and ghost girls on fire.

I’m sorry to say that, ultimately, Strangers disappointed me. Expecting a murder mystery, I was waiting for a series of clues to unfold and then be pieced together in a way that recontextualized the story. Instead, the reveal of the killer fell flat because there was no previous connection to the character. There was no way I could have pieced together the string of deaths on my own, and by the end of the book the genre has shifted and the novel becomes a super hero origin story, setting us up for a trilogy (I think), which also left elements of the mystery unsolved. I wouldn’t teach this one, if for no other reason that the ending fails to satisfy. The motivations for the conspiracy remain unclear.

To back up a bit, Strangers focuses on Cole, a controversial childhood hero in his community Wounded Sky First Nation. At seven years old, his school erupted into flames. He rushed back into the building and, somehow, miraculously, he lifted a fallen wall off the ground, freeing two of his best friends. Tragically, the other children passed away. He was then swept away to Winnipeg, partially to protect him from the controversy: a fair number of people hate him because he didn’t save their loved ones, a fair number of people hate him for leaving and never reaching out. At the prompting of his old friend, he returns to Wounded Sky for a memorial, but there’s a catch. Not only does he seem to bring back a pandemic that kills people within twenty four hours, but it seems like every time Cole spends alone time with a friend, that friend ends up dead. Oh, there’s also a trickster coyote figure that is guiding Cole and forcing him to take action in secret, blackmailing him with a purgatorial ghost girl who died in the fire.

Part of my frustration with the novel is its implausibility. After one of Cole’s friends is shot and killed in his arms, the police let him roam free, which I can maybe forgive, but when Cole is the last person to see a second victim alive and is free, it seems totally implausible that police would not take him into custody. I can accept the magical realism element, but the police procedural elements give no good reason for Cole to be free. Also, towards the end of the book, Cole needs to donate his blood and a group of teenagers figures out how to do a transfusion, essentially—thank goodness a real doctor steps in, but it’s again pretty implausible.

Another issue I felt the book suffered from was a bloated cast of characters. The first fifty pages introduce a ton of characters—friends, family, community members. This would not be an issue if the conventions of a mystery novel were followed more closely. If we had a large cast of characters to suspect and deduce the true killer, it would add a fun dimension to the book. Instead, it feels like we just need more people to have conversations with—and those conversations are repetitive. At the risk of being an insensitive jerk, I was pretty irritated by Cole’s mopey attitude. He suffers from survivor’s guilt over the event at his elementary school and experiences doubt, guilt, shame, etc. I wanted him to just get over it. He did what he could to help—he saved two lives; he was seven years old, what does he or anyone expect him to do—save everyone? It’s reasonable to explore that survivor’s guilt for a bit, but we wallowed alongside him too much.

There are some moments when the characters have a nice connection, but there are some of the YA tropes that drive me crazy and feel nothing like the students in my room. The childhood friend that Cole is in love with is probably the best case for a sincere and authentic connection. Amongst the friends of the book, their personalities and dialogue just don’t quite register as being substantially different from one another (which is another factor in making the cast feel too bloated).

The book wasn’t all bad, but it did make me feel cold. By the end of the book, I was just waiting for it to come to a close. There were some fun action sequences, but they were really hindered by the crawl of the wallowing. Incidentally, there were the strange tonal shifts throughout the text. The subject matter is deeply serious but the omniscient coyote guide makes jokes throughout—and worse, outdated jokes that no teenager today will understand and that parents might find cute in their tongue-in-cheek way.

Anyway, it was worth trying out Strangers to keep the curriculum fresh and engaging, but sadly I don’t think this one is going to work out for my class.

Happy reading!