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 Gazette (Montreal)“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.” —National Post“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“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 again a First World War backdrop. Read it and see for yourself.” —Vancouver Sun“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.” —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“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“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