Melanie Bluelake's Dream

The spirited heroine of Betty Dorion's juvenile novel certainly makes the best of things. She forms a close friendship with Rachel, a fellow Cree, and refuses to be bugged by Tanya, a classmate who seems determined to make her life miserable. But Melanie finds herself pulled between the familiar and the strange. She likes her new friend but never stops thinking of the gang on the reserve. She supports her single mother's efforts to better their lives by finishing high school, but longs for the loving comforts of Kokum, her grandmother back home. Melanie Bluelake's Dream provides a vivid child's-eye glimpse into a process happening every day on streets and in schools throughout Canada. With refreshing clarity, it captures the ambivalence felt by many Native people struggling to feel at home in an urban world of someone else's making.