Five Little Indians

This novel is an intense depiction of how life unfolds for five likeable young people once they’re out of residential school. Were you surprised at the challenges they faced in their lives?

While the author makes it clear these five young people suffered horrors during their years at an “Indian school” she doesn’t dwell on that. Instead, she follows their individual and interwoven lives after they were released – or escaped – from the school in the 1970s. Why might the author have chosen to tell the story this way?

The braided stories of the five, whose lives connect and disconnect over the decades, help us see why they, striving to survive in a world for which they are woefully unprepared, make the choices they do. Do you think in our own daily lives, we are often unprepared to make difficult life choices?

Quote from the author: “I just hope that people choose to broaden their horizons, to broaden their understandings of things, and that hopefully this book will help with that.” Did this novel accomplish what the author hoped to achieve?

What have you learned about Residential Schools after reading this novel? Has the novel changed you – broadened your perspective?

During an interview, the author muses that when people don’t share sorrow, it can drive them apart. Do you agree with this? Why or why not? Can you think of any examples?