***A 2018 SPR Book Awards Honourable Mention***
***A National Indie Excellence Awards Finalist***
***A B.R.A.G. Medallion Recipient***
Northern Ontario, 1960. A family on the Eabametoong reserve wakes to the sound of a floatplane on the lake. Within hours, six-year-old Wanisin and his sister Mitena are torn from their parents under a government order and flown to a residential school hundreds of miles away.
A Child is a Piece of Paper is a gripping, emotionally charged novel about a family ruptured by Canada's residential school system — and a child's fight to hold onto who he is in a system built to erase him. Told with cinematic clarity and a sensory closeness to the land, the novel captures the tension between a childhood of hunting trips, sibling play, and the rhythms of the bush, and the sudden intrusion of church and state determined to "civilize" by force.
Crossley writes in a lyrical, image-rich style — attuned to light, snow, breath, animal bodies, and the physicality of fear — with the pacing of historical drama and the emotional force of literary fiction. The result is a page-turning, accessible literary novel that shows, with human stakes rather than lecture, what happens when a government claims a child on paper — but cannot fully claim the mind, memory, or spirit beneath it.
Powerful, visceral, and unforgettable — this is not a history lesson. It is what it felt like to be inside it.
"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