Book- For Joshua

For Joshua by Richard Wagamese

Staring the modern world in the eye, Richard Wagamese confronts its snares and perils. He sees people coveting without knowingly why, looking for roots without understanding what constitutes home, searching for acceptance without extending reciprocal respect, and longing for love without knowing how to offer it.

He sees this because he lived it.

For Joshua is Wagamese’s love letter to his estranged son. Ojibway tradition calls for fathers to walk their children through the world and teach them their place in it. To teach them they belong. In this intimate memoir, Wagamese describes his own tumultuous journey – through childhood trauma, racism, and substance abuse – and his fight to emerge stronger. His road to self-knowledge has been long and treacherous, but this has furnished him, if not with a complete set of answers, then at least with a profound grasp of the questions.

Hoping to impart his newfound understanding of the world onto his beloved son, Wagamese shares his search for happiness and the choices he has made to open himself up to it.

Richard Wagamese (1955-2017), an Ojibway from the Wabaseemoong First Nation in northern Ontario, was recognized as one of Canada’s Foremost First Nations authors and story tellers. He authored fifteen books including his best selling memoirs One Native Life (2008) and One Story, One Song (2011), which received the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature. His acclaimed novel Indian Horse (2012) was the 2013 People’s Choice winner in CBC’s Canada Reads competition. His final book, Embers (2016), a collection of Ojibway meditations, was shortlisted for a BC Book Prize.