Peyakow is Cree for one who walks alone, and the second memoir after Mamaskatch.
It follows a life through loss, addiction and a career that runs up into senior federal negotiating work, held together by a connection to a late grandfather. The structure moves the way memory does rather than the way a timeline does.
What it refuses to do is resolve into a redemption arc. Healing is presented as ongoing work rather than a thing that completes, and the book is better for not tidying that up.
Nominated for the Hilary Weston Prize. Read June 2022.