Three Day Road

Awards for
Three Day Road

Winner of the Rogers Writers’Trust Fiction Prize

Winner of the CBA Libris Fiction Book of the Year

Winner of the Amazon.ca/Books in Print First Novel Award

Winner of the CAA MOSAID Technologies Inc. Award
for Fiction Silver Medal

Winner of the 2005 McNally Robinson Aboriginal Book of the Year

Shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction

A CBC Canada Reads Selection

Praise for
Three Day Road

“It’s gripping, wrenching, eye-opening, illuminating, stirring, moral (not moralistic) fiction, rooted in closely observed fact … Boyden, like Homer in
The Iliad
, is precise and unflinching in his descriptions of the ways in which soldiers fall in battle … This novel is a remarkable achievement, and a breathtaking debut.
”

—The Globe and Mail

“The writing is minimalist, the characters vivid, the pace measured, the hold on the reader firm … This book will stir up controversy, win awards, hit bestseller lists, and spawn a feature film. Count on it.”

—The Montreal Gazette

“
Three Day Road
, his first novel, will stand beside Timothy Findley’s classic
The Wars
as a moving account of the Great War from a Canadian perspective, but Boyden has delivered something new … The cinematic battle scenes blaze with intensity and the riveting climax of the boys’ friendship feels brutal and inevitable. It satisfies even as it shocks … the writing is glorious and shines with real immediacy … Boyden is a remarkable storyteller.
Three Day Road
is an unforgettable and valuable depiction of the aboriginal Canadian experience in the First World War and at home.”

—The National Post

“You will never forget these two young Cree snipers plunged in the horror of the First World War, where the enemy was so close that one could smell him. A beautifully written and haunting story of survival and innocence shattered, of friendship, death, redemption and love of the land. The three protagonists, Xavier, Elijah, and Niska will be in my heart forever. Please, please don’t miss it!”

—Isabel Allende

“
Three Day Road
is as fine a novel as I have seen during the five years I have been reading first novels. My prediction is that it will win every award for which it is nominated, and that it will become a Canadian and international classic.”

—W.P. Kinsella,
Books in Canada

“The extraordinary richness of Boyden’s prose and his material, both in the forgotten history he’s recovered and his electric metaphors, make
Three Day Road
one of the finest novels in an already rich national tradition.”

—Maclean’s

“Joseph Boyden’s
Three Day Road
is a brilliant novel. You will suffer a bit, but it’s overwhelmingly worth the voyage.”

—Jim Harrison

“
Three Day Road
is a devastatingly truthful work of fiction, and a masterful account of hell and healing. This is a grave, grand, and passionate book.”

—Louise Erdrich

“
Three Day Road
is that rarest of books: It works on different levels for different readers. It can be enjoyed as a military history, a study of the tragedy of First Nations people in Canada, or simply as a strong literary novel set against a First World War backdrop. Read it and see for yourself.”

—
The Vancouver Sun

“A tale that’s pure magic ... Boyden’s braided stories twine together to a surprisingly gentle ending. There is death—many deaths—but there is also rebirth and beauty in this author’s passionate storytelling as in the world he describes.”

—Straight.com

“
Three Day Road
[is] a stunning, epic story … has a greatness about it…”

—
Winnipeg Free Press

“This poignant tale weaves together magic, hubris, and plain good storytelling, making it one of the best Canadian literature offerings of the season.”

—The Calgary Herald

“Perhaps the most startling success of this book is the way it combines a tale of racial and cultural displacement with a mystic saga … He guides us through immensely complex stories with subtlety and grace.”

—Independent on Sunday

“There have been so many fine novels inspired by the First World War that to read one that is not just harrowing, but fresh, comes as a pleasant surprise … [It’s] a fully rounded work of fiction which, after a quiet opening, develops into a real page-turner … His portrait of an indigenous people who are, in their way, hunted to near-extinction is poignant and convincing.”

—Sunday Telegraph

“Boyden strips away unnecessary embellishments and tells his story with the starkness and simplicity that does justice to the raw worlds of bush and trench. It is an absorbing read, with chilling, exhaustive detail about the butchery of animals and soldiers. But the net effect is rewarding—hallucinatory, even—as the reader is drawn into the Cree network of spirits, voices, and stories.”

—Scotland on Sunday

“It takes an exceptionally intense and clear vision for a writer to persuade us that there is anything new to be said about the Great War, now creeping steadily towards its centenary anniversary. Yet every now and then a book comes along (or, in the case of Pat Barker, a trilogy) that rescues from the mire and carnage a genuinely new perspective on the awful events of 1914–1918. Focusing on the rarely told stories of indigenous people enlisted into the Canadian army, Joseph Boyden’s first novel,
Three Day Road
, is one such book … What sets Boyden’s writing alongside other notable war novels is the way in which the fighting, for all the grim detail, does not dominate his other, broader themes. He succeeds in driving the narrative along with sufficient dramatic incident to satisfy his brothers, but what haunts the book are the more insidious developments offsetting the conflict in Europe.”

—The Glasgow Herald

“Simply, beautifully, Boyden takes us into the minds and hearts of his characters. The result is an otherworldly reading experience … this is that rare novel that illuminates the past for the present—for all time, in fact.”

—New Orleans Times Picayune

“
Three Day Road
is a compelling read, beautifully told, and timeless in its lessons.”

—Rick Bass

“There are also lyrical moments which posses an eerie power— especially where Boyden writes about the northern landscape and the human relationship to it. He has illuminated a forgotten corner of the Great War and that, in itself, is a prodigious achievement.”

—The Independent

PENGUIN CANADA

THREE DAY ROAD

A Canadian of Irish, Scottish, and Métis roots,
JOSEPH BOYDEN
is the author of
Born with a Tooth,
a collection of short stories that was shortlisted for the Upper Canada Writer’s Craft Award. He divides his time between northern Ontario and Louisiana, where he teaches writing at the University of New Orleans.
Three Day Road
is his first novel and will be published in ten languages.

ALSO BY JOSEPH BOYDEN

Born with a Tooth

(short stories)

THREE
DAY
ROAD

JOSEPH BOYDEN

PENGUIN CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3

(a division of Pearson Canada Inc.)

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(a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in a Viking Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2005

Simultaneously published by Penguin Group (USA) and Weidenfeld and Nicolson UK.

Published in a Penguin Canada paperback by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2006

Published in this edition, 2008

(WC) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright © Joseph Boyden, 2005

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last
year invested $21.7 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

Nous remercions de son soutien le Conseil des Arts du Canada, qui a investi
21,7 millions de dollars l’an dernier dans les lettres et l’édition à travers le Canada.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication data available upon request to the publisher.

ISBN: 978-0-14-305695-6

Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.