The Night Wanderer ends with a powerful scene in which Pierre, the vampire, inspires sixteen-year-old Tiffany to go on living and draw strength from the traditions of their people Motorcycles & Sweetgrass has a similar scene at the end between ‘John’ and seventh-grader Virgil, but it’s more ambiguous, a reflection on the use of a trickster. The central character of Motorcycles & Sweetgrass is an incarnation of Nanabush, a trickster from Anishinaabe myth, who turns up in the guise of a white man named ‘John’ (his surname varies depending on who he talks to). The night wanderer is, as we quickly learn, a man who travelled to Europe in the sixteenth century and fell afoul of a vampire. They’re both about ancient supernatural Anishinabe men who return to Otter Lake and have a profound effect on a young person in that community. They’re interesting novels to read back-to-back. As you’d expect from a playwright, the scenes move. Even when they’re confused about what they want, at least they want something at any given moment. And his characters are well-drawn, sometimes broad but always interesting. His stories marry an earthy sense of reality with superhuman and supernatural figures who upend that reality by their basic nature. Taylor’s prose is light, quick, and direct. Point-of-view is varied, and sub-plots more complex.īoth are charming books. It’s longer and more complex than The Night Wanderer, and perhaps more fully exploits the freedoms of the novel form. In this story, an ancient trickster spirit comes to Otter Lake and becomes involved with the woman who’s currently the chief of the community. In 2010 Taylor returned to Otter Lake with another novel, Motorcycles & Sweetgrass, published by Knopf Canada. It’s since been adapted by Alison Kooistra into a graphic novel with art by Mike Wyatt. Taylor mentions in an afterword that the story began existence as a play which never quite satisfied him, until fifteen years later, while working with Annick Press on another project, he rewrote it as a prose novel. The book follows a mysterious stranger who returns from Europe to the fictional Anishinabe (or Ojibway) Otter Lake Reserve in what is now Ontario, and a teenage girl whose life he ends up affecting. In 2007 Annick Press published a Young Adult tale called The Night Wanderer: A Native Gothic Novel by Drew Hayden Taylor, a veteran playwright, journalist, and essayist (as well as stand-up comic, TV writer, and documentary film-maker).
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