***A 2018 SPR Book Awards Honourable Mention***
***A National Indie Excellence Awards Finalist***
***A B.R.A.G. Medallion Recipient***
A powerful new novel that forcefully places the reader into the brutality of Canada's infamous residential school system.
"Raw... gritty...no single adjective can sufficiently describe the intensity of A Child is a Piece of Paper...Crossley has written a very powerful work of fiction...Poignant and painful...will stay with you long after the last page has been read."
— SPR Book Review
"I was absolutely hooked ... The characters are diverse and vivid ... [an] outstanding story of survival ... an emotional rollercoaster ... the ending had me in tears."
— Readers' Favorite (5-star review)
"A gripping, wrenching read...Fiction readers seeking enlightenment into the processes of cultural domination and transformation will find A Child is a Piece of Paper an important key to understanding cultural survival and recovery...thoroughly engrossing."
— Midwest Book Review
A six-year-old boy's idyllic childhood is shattered after being torn from his remote northern reserve and forced into a Catholic-run residential school at Dresden Lake. At Dresden, where the mission is to "kill the Indian in the child", he lives in a constant state of terror while trying to survive the ever-increasing cruelty of a depraved schoolmaster. When the brutality becomes unbearable, the only option is to escape, a decision which ultimately ends in tragedy.
The ripple effects of this tragedy haunt him well into adulthood, where the destruction of his marriage mirrors his failure as a father and the slow, painful erosion of his identity. In old age, he is presented with an opportunity: a chance to reclaim something that was lost and to fix a longstanding injustice. But to do so he must first return to Dresden to face his past once and for all.
Heartbreaking and beautiful, A Child is a Piece of Paper explores the impact of Canada's cultural genocide against its Indigenous Peoples and the loss of innocence of a child, a culture, and indeed an entire nation.
