In the early 1930s, Oscar Wolf, a 13-year-old Native from the Chippewas of Rama Indian Reserve, sets fire to the business section of his village north of Toronto in a fit of misguided rage against white society, inadvertently killing his grandfather and a young maid. Tortured by guilt and fearful of divine retribution, Oscar sets out on a lifetime quest for redemption.
His journey takes him to California where he works as a fruit picker and prizefighter during the Great Depression, to the Second World War where he becomes a decorated soldier, to university where he excels as a student and athlete, and to the diplomatic service in the postwar era where he causes a stir at the United Nations in New York and in Colombia and Australia.
Beset by an all-too-human knack for making doubtful choices, Oscar discovers that peace of mind is indeed hard to find in this saga of mid-20th-century aboriginal life in Canada and abroad that will appeal to readers of all backgrounds and ages.

Review

Bartleman’s realistic novel, with its edgy verisimilitude, deserves a broad readership. (Library Journal 2013-06-15)
Dark humour runs throughout the text. Bartleman especially has fun satirizing self-important diplomats and politicians (Ottawa Citizen 2013-06-14)

About the Author

James Bartleman is the bestselling author of the novel As Long as the Rivers Flow and the memoir Raisin Wine: A Boyhood in a Different Muskoka. A member of the Chippewas of Rama First Nation, he was lieutenant governor of Ontario from 2002 to 2007. He lives in Perth, Ontario.

From the accomplished memoirist and former Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario comes a first novel of incredible heart and spirit for every Canadian. The novel follows one girl, Martha, from the Cat Lake First Nation in Northern Ontario who is "stolen" from her family at the age of six and flown far away to residential school. She doesn't speak English but is punished for speaking her native language; most terrifying and bewildering, she is also "fed" to the school's attendant priest with an attraction to little girls. Ten long years later, Martha finds her way home again, barely able to speak her native tongue. The memories of abuse at the residential school are so strong that she tries to drown her feelings in drink, and when she gives birth to her beloved son, Spider, he is taken away by Children's Aid to Toronto. In time, she has a baby girl, Raven, whom she decides to leave in the care of her mother while she braves the bewildering strangeness of the big city to find her son and bring him home. From the Hardcover edition.

Review

“As Long as the Rivers Flow casts an unflinching eye on the self-destruction that often befalls residential school survivors and their children. . . . Impressive.”
— Quill & Quire

“An extremely poignant novel that exposes the short-term and long-term damage of the residential school system. James Bartleman has skillfully illustrated an unpleasant but inescapable episode in Canadian and Native history and deserves recognition for shedding necessary light into the darkness.”
 — Drew Hayden Taylor, author of Motorcycles and Sweetgrass

 “James Bartleman combines the expertise of well-informed non-fiction with the compelling elements of fiction to tell a devastating, inspiring story. Only someone extremely well-informed and compassionate could have written it. My first teaching assignments thirty years ago were in Oji-Cree communities around James Bay. If only I’d had this novel to read then. It let me walk a mile in Martha’s moccasins, and her tracks remain on my heart. If you’re only going to read one book to glimpse what it’s been like to be Aboriginal in this country, this novel should be the one.”
 — Anne Laurel Carter, author of The Shepherd’s Granddaughter and Last Chance Bay From the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

JAMES BARTLEMAN rose from humble circumstances in Port Carling, Ontario, to become Foreign Policy Advisor to the right PM Chrétien in 1994. After a distinguished career of more than thirty-five years in the Canadian foreign service, in 2002 he became the first Native Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario. He is the author of the prize-winning memoir Out of Muskoka. From the Hardcover edition.