Status
Available
Call number
Call number
FIC KIN c. 3
Collection
Local notes
Shelved in Aboriginal Collection
Description
With a plethora of superb reviews and upcoming publication in the US, Thomas King's latest work affirms him as one of our wittiest and wisest writers. Truth & Bright Water is the tale of two young cousins and one long summer. Tecumseh and Lum live in Truth, a small American town, and Bright Water, the reserve across the border and over the river. Family is the only reason most of the people stay in the towns, and yet old secrets and new mysteries keep pulling the more nomadic residents back to the fold. Monroe Swimmer, famous Indian artist, returns to live in the old church with the hope of painting it into the prairie landscape and re-establishing the buffalo population. Tecumseh's Aunt Cassie has come back too, already arguing with his mother. Why has his mother given Cassie a suitcase full of baby clothes? And why is Lum interested only in winning the Indian Days race? Tecumseh has more questions than anyone will answer, until the Indian Days festival arrives and the mysteries of the summer collide in love, betrayal and reconciliation. Equally plainspoken and poetic, comic and poignant, Truth & Bright Water is a crackling good story that resonates with universal truths.… (more)
Genres
Publication
Toronto : HarperPerennial Canada, [1999]
Original publication date
1999
User reviews
LibraryThing member tracyjayhawk
A heart-breaker... this book was only at 3 1/2 stars until the last 20 pages, and King saved all the drama for those twenty. The ending is extraordinarily wrenching. The book explores the interaction between Euro-American & Indian cultures, set on the border between Canada & the US.
LibraryThing member SeriousGrace
Truth & Bright Water is more about a Native teenage boy named Tecumseh than it is about the small towns of Truth and Bright Water which he calls home. Tecumseh is fifteen and life for him consists of keeping peace with his separated parents, keeping his abused cousin company, learning how to drive,
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trying to find a job, understanding what it means to be Indian during tourist season, unraveling the mysteries surrounding his aunt, and finding things like a baby's skull with his dog, Soldier. While Tecumseh is an average kid his community is anything but. Truth & Bright Water opens with Tecumseh and his cousin, Lum, spying on a woman who not only empties a suitcase over a cliff, but appears to have jumped off after it. Was it suicide? Then there is Monroe Swimmer, a famous artist returned home, who lives in a church and has big plans to make said church disappear. And what of the baby's skull found with a ribbon threaded through its eye holes? Show Less
LibraryThing member fiverivers
Thomas King is that rare writer capable of not only telling a compelling, interesting story, but of seamlessly marrying that to literary devices which, like a painter who understands the medium, is capable of allowing the transfer of light off and through opaque and transparent pigments, creating
Truth and Bright Water is a story of restoration, reparation, relocation of both the body and the spirit. It follows the lives of a two young boys, and an artist who restores paintings. And it is so much more than that.
In weaving together the narratives of these people, King creates a remarkable, sustained metaphor wherein a church is restored by the artist, returning it to the land by painting it to blend into the landscape around it, yet the church's interior, like a Tardis, remains, in this case the habitation and, if you will, the spirit of the artist who has taken an edifice of misery to the First Nations and made it part of his own self. It is a brilliant bit of writing.
Highly recommended.
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depth where before there was only two dimensions.Truth and Bright Water is a story of restoration, reparation, relocation of both the body and the spirit. It follows the lives of a two young boys, and an artist who restores paintings. And it is so much more than that.
In weaving together the narratives of these people, King creates a remarkable, sustained metaphor wherein a church is restored by the artist, returning it to the land by painting it to blend into the landscape around it, yet the church's interior, like a Tardis, remains, in this case the habitation and, if you will, the spirit of the artist who has taken an edifice of misery to the First Nations and made it part of his own self. It is a brilliant bit of writing.
Highly recommended.
Show Less
LibraryThing member fiverivers
Thomas King is that rare writer capable of not only telling a compelling, interesting story, but of seamlessly marrying that to literary devices which, like a painter who understands the medium, is capable of allowing the transfer of light off and through opaque and transparent pigments, creating
Truth and Bright Water is a story of restoration, reparation, relocation of both the body and the spirit. It follows the lives of a two young boys, and an artist who restores paintings. And it is so much more than that.
In weaving together the narratives of these people, King creates a remarkable, sustained metaphor wherein a church is restored by the artist, returning it to the land by painting it to blend into the landscape around it, yet the church's interior, like a Tardis, remains, in this case the habitation and, if you will, the spirit of the artist who has taken an edifice of misery to the First Nations and made it part of his own self. It is a brilliant bit of writing.
Highly recommended.
Show More
depth where before there was only two dimensions.Truth and Bright Water is a story of restoration, reparation, relocation of both the body and the spirit. It follows the lives of a two young boys, and an artist who restores paintings. And it is so much more than that.
In weaving together the narratives of these people, King creates a remarkable, sustained metaphor wherein a church is restored by the artist, returning it to the land by painting it to blend into the landscape around it, yet the church's interior, like a Tardis, remains, in this case the habitation and, if you will, the spirit of the artist who has taken an edifice of misery to the First Nations and made it part of his own self. It is a brilliant bit of writing.
Highly recommended.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Cheryl_in_CC_NV
I think I picked this up for the cover. I'm two chapters in and not sure I'll finish or not - depends on if it gets more 'yucky.' There's already a gun, alcohol, and references to children being beaten. Sorry; I just don't need to read about those kinds of struggles.
Ok, did finish:
Ack. Good thing
And so far as the yuck factor - it kept just on the safe side of my level of tolerance. Probably totally fine for most people.
Oh, to clarify the star rating - I would have given it two stars except I'm just enchanted by Monroe's current pieces,the kite & platform, the hidden church, and the iron buffalo
Ok, did finish:
Ack. Good thing
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it was short. I was paying attention, and I still don't know what was going on. But that's maybe ok, because they're all so wrapped up in themselves they don't communicate or care about what's going on with each other anyway. I guess it's just too *L*iterary or something for me. Personally I prefer characters who face their challenges, who at least try to grow, or at the very least try not to raise their kids to the same misery that they're living.And so far as the yuck factor - it kept just on the safe side of my level of tolerance. Probably totally fine for most people.
Oh, to clarify the star rating - I would have given it two stars except I'm just enchanted by Monroe's current pieces,
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LibraryThing member Romonko
This is the second Thomas King book I've read. The first one I read was The Back of the Turtle. At that time I recognized that Thomas King was a master storyteller, and,, in this book, he shows that he still is. His writing actually draws and paints pictures of his story so that I felt like I was
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right there in Truth and in Bright Water when I read this book. Truth and Bright Water are two communities on either side of the American and Canadian border. The reserve is on the Canadian side, but lots of people from that reserve moved to Truth, but continue to go back and forth all the time. The story drew me in from the start. 15 year old Tecumseh (who lives in Truth but who's grandmother lives in Bright Water), and 17 year old Lum who lives with his abusive father in Bright Water are the two main characters. The two are inseparable friends. The dialogue, the characters, and the scenery, which is just as real as the other two, sparkles with charm, wit, humanity and intensity. At the same time, there is a sense of doom hanging over what is at first pictured as an idyllic summer with two friends just living the life. But the journey to get to the end of that glowing idyll is so much fun that I forget to turn pages in dread. The book is devastating at the end, but the journey to get there was worth every minute. I cannot recommend Thomas King's writing enough. He is a Canadian treasure, and this book is a wonderful place to start to read his treasure trove of novels. Show Less
ISBN
0006481965 / 9780006481966