The Lesser Blessed (20th Anniversary Edition)

by Richard Van Camp

Overview

Over 10,000 copies sold in Canada! The 20th-anniversary edition of Richard Van Camp’s best-selling coming-of-age story, with a new introduction and story by the author

Larry is a Dogrib Indian growing up in the small northern town of Fort Simmer. His tongue, his hallucinations and his fantasies are hotter than the center of the sun. At sixteen, he loves Iron Maiden, the North and Juliet Hope, the high school “tramp.”

In this powerful and very funny first novel, Richard Van Camp gives us one of the most original teenage characters in Canadian fiction. Skinny as spaghetti, nervy and self-deprecating, Larry is an appealing mixture of bravado and vulnerability. His past holds many terrors: an abusive father, blackouts from sniffing gasoline, an accident that killed several of his cousins and he’s now being hunted and haunted by a pack of blue monkeys. But through his new friendship with Johnny, a Metis who just moved to town, he’s now ready to face his memories—and his future.

The Lesser Blessed is an eye-opening depiction of what it is to be a young Dogrib man in the age of AIDS, disillusionment with Catholicism and a growing world consciousness.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781771621144
Publisher:	Douglas & McIntyre Ltd.
Publication date:	02/27/2016
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	128
Sales rank:	715,131
File size:	672 KB

About the Author

An internationally renowned storyteller and best-selling author, Richard Van Camp was born in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, and is a member of the Dogrib (Tlicho) Dene Nation. He acted as a cultural consultant for CBC Television’s North of 60. A graduate of the En’owkin School of Writing in Penticton, he completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Writing at the University of Victoria and completed his Master’s of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. His new baby book Welcome Song for Baby: A Lullaby for Newborns is the official selection of the Books for BC Babies program and is being given to every newborn baby in British Columbia in 2008. Richard was awarded Storyteller of the Year for both Canada and the US by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers.

Editorial Reviews

"Its halcyon moments are cigarette scorched, and it has teeth—lots of them. The Lesser Blessed stood apart in 1996, and there has yet to be anything like it." —Booklist

“I believe in very few things, yet The Lesser Blessed, as dark as it is bright, is the only book I've ever read that had me thinking a paradise exists.” —Morgan Talty, award-winning author of Night of the Living Rez, in People magazine

"Van Camp really shows how to write about youth with trauma, and his book was not only instructive for my own writing but also revelatory in the ways it helped me articulate things I couldn’t before—the ways it opened me up to my own past and healed me with the power that is fiction." —Morgan Talty in Shondaland

"The Lesser Blessed is a treasured time capsule, but one that is still relevant and familiar today. Few elements have changed in Canada’s North. It’s rough, raw and real. It’s about finding ground and losing ground, reaching for a lost language and finding a new one that sometimes only love and ravens understand." —Vancouver Sun

"...the writing is in places startingly original, and the story completely compelling...This novel, like all challenging fiction, is filled with awful, unavoidable truth." —Quill & Quire

"In this powerful and very funny debut novel, author Richard Van Camp gives us one of the most original teenage characters in Canadian fiction...This 20th anniversary edition of a true Canadian literary classic from Douglas & McIntyre is unreservedly recommended." —Midwest Book Review

"Van Camp doesn’t turn away from the experiences high school kids have with drugs, sex, and fights, but he doesn’t glorify these moments either." —American Indians in Children's Literature

From the Publisher

In this powerful and very funny debut novel, author Richard Van Camp gives us one of the most original teenage characters in Canadian fiction... "The Lesser Blessed" is an eye-opening depiction of what it is to be a young Dogrib man in the age of AIDS, disillusionment with Catholicism, and a growing world consciousness. This 20th anniversary edition of a true Canadian literary classic from Douglas & McIntyre is unreservedly recommended."

Midwest Book Review

"Its halcyon moments are cigarette scorched, and it has teeth—lots of them. The Lesser Blessed stood apart in 1996, and there has yet to be anything like it."

Booklist

"Its halcyon moments are cigarette scorched, and it has teeth—lots of them.
The Lesser Blessed stood apart in 1996, and there has yet to be anything like it."

Booklist