A Spirit in the Material World: Cold, by Drew Hayden Taylor

Drew Hayden Taylor’s new novel Cold starts dramatically enough with the crash of a small plane in northern Ontario, but the pace soon shifts gears into a slow unfolding of three separate storylines with different players. There is Fabiola Halan, a journalist of Caribbean background who was raised by adoptive parents in Montreal. She survives the plane crash, goes on to write a best-selling memoir of the harrowing experience, and is currently on a book tour that has brought her to Toronto.

Then there is Elmore Trent, an Anishnawbe academic who teaches a course in Indigenous stories at a Toronto university. Far from his traumatic childhood in a residential school, he has developed a taste for the better things in life and is having an affair with one of his students, the bright and independent Katie Fiddler, who is of Cree background, while trying to reconcile with his white wife Sarah, an ambitious real estate agent, from whom he is recently separated.

Finally, there is Paul North, the Anishnawbe right winger for the Otter Lake Muskrats, a team in the Indigenous Hockey League, who is in Toronto for a big tournament. Now in his mid-30s, Paul – when he and his roommate Jamie are not hitting the bars where they pick up and bed nubile young puck bunnies – is starting to feel his age while watching Herbie Tort, a younger and more talented team member with whom he does not get along, rise rapidly toward an NHL career.

I have to confess to a mild bout of impatience as Taylor laid out these stories separately. He takes his time, having them interconnect sporadically at first, but once they started to overlap I found all three narratives compelling. It was tempting to try and second guess where the narrative was going and yet there were enough twists and turns to keep me flipping the pages. The stories are brought together by two separate incidents of ultra-violent murders involving dismemberment and cannibalism. Taylor utilizes elements of the horror and police procedural genres to help him spin an urban cautionary tale of passed-down Indigenous lore making its presence felt in the fast-paced modern world.

Probably best known as a playwright, although with many credits as a filmmaker and author, Taylor brings a wry humour to his characters’ dialogue. During a meeting between Elmore Trent and his estranged wife Sarah, Trent tries vainly to impress her by talking about his work.

“I’m starting a new book.” Trent didn’t know why he just lied. It had just popped out of nowhere.

“Reading or writing one?”

“Both actually.”

“It’s about time. When was the last time you wrote, about seven years ago?”

After he goes on to tell her that a book about Christian parables that she had given him has inspired an idea of deconstructing Indigenous legends to see how they fit in today’s society, she counters with:

“Good for you, Elmore. Native stuff is still in. I don’t suppose you’ll have any trouble selling it. Your department head will be delighted, I’m sure.” Sitting back, Sarah looked at him expectantly.

“You want to hear more?” Trent knew what she would say, but there was always hope.

“I’ll wait for the movie.”

This exchange proves to be a foreshadowing of further events. I don’t want to say too much for fear of giving away spoilers, but when Elmore Trent and Paul North (with the assistance of a woman who is connected to the plane crash) find themselves working together to track down an Anishnawbe spirit known as a Wendigo, Taylor has a field day pitting modern-day Indigenous culture against its ancient legends. Whether it be hockey, academia, or the controversy surrounding whether raisins belong in butter tarts, no cow is too sacred for Taylor’s pointed observations.

Irreverent, yet always relevant to the times in which we live, Cold turns up the heat on the prevailing zeitgeist of First Nations sensibilities negotiating a settler-run landscape.

DREW HAYDEN TAYLOR has done many things, most of which he is proud of. An Ojibway from the Curve Lake First Nations in Ontario, he has worn many hats in his career, from performing stand-up comedy at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. to being Artistic Director of Canada’s premiere Native theatre company, Native Earth Performing Arts. The author of 34 books, he looks forward to finding out where his imagination will take him next.

Publisher ‏ : ‎ McClelland & Stewart (Jan. 9 2024)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0771002890
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0771002892

Steven Mayoff

StevenMayoff(he/him) was born inMontreal and moved to Prince Edward Island, Canada in 2001. His books include the story collection Fatted Calf Blues (Turnstone Press, 2009), the novel Our Lady of Steerage (Bunim &Bannigan, 2015), the poetry chapbook Leonard’s Flat (Grey Borders Books, 2018) and the poetry collection Swinging Between Water and Stone (Guernica Editions, 2019) and the novelThe Island Gospel According to Samson Grief(Radiant Press, 2023). As a lyricist, he has collaborated with composer Ted Dykstra onDion a Rock Opera,which will receive its world premiere at the Coal Mine Theatre in Toronto in February 2024.