Blurb
Hallee Landry is a promising young Tsawwassen First Nations attorney and litigator with an enviable résumé and a bright future. At only twenty-seven years old, she is not a residential school survivor. Or is she? Everything she has understood to be true about her origins is challenged when she is kidnapped while in Kamloops to attend the annual Pow Wow. Now somebody wants her dead. But why? The perpetrators seem to be a confounding mix of low-level criminals and a sophisticated cadre of malefactors backed by someone high up at the Vatican.
Hallee is bewildered to learn that her only allies are an elderly nun, a venerable old Catholic priest, and an Indigenous midwife. This motley crew of improbables faces long odds in unravelling a 50-year-old mystery before the opposing menacing forces erase history for good.
Lurking in the shadows is a long-standing conspiracy of extortion, child abuse, kidnapping, and murder. The only clues on offer are an old drawing, a scratchy cassette tape, and a majestic totem pole. First-time novelist Ray Anthony Morris beckons us into the classroom and dares us to slip behind the curtain of an Indian residential school. Much like the backdrop of the mighty Fraser River, serpentining through the Canadian Rockies, this heroic story lifts our spirits on the wings of heart-choking tales of uncommon valour and then plunges us straight into the rollicking, white-water rush-ride of a sensational suspense thriller.
Excerpt
I think my panic would have been more acute without the hypnotic rhythmic motion of tires thrumming the highway. I was dead sure my eyes were open and yet, I could not see. Terrified even to ask myself in silence, I asked nonetheless: Was I blind or just emerging from some dark, propulsive nightmare?
My nose itched and I could have used a good scratch, but my hands wouldn’t do what I asked them to—they couldn’t move. I was pretty sure I had been asleep. If I’m honest, as I became more fully awake, more alert, the original dozy bewilderment of my earliest consciousness was caving from the onslaught of adrenaline, of fear.
I was fighting hard for basic comprehension. It occurred to me that my nose was itching because something, some cloth or hat, was covering my face. I struggled to draw a breath, and, speaking of that, I could smell my breath and was not impressed. The cloth was also rubbing against my ears. OMG! I was hooded!
That encroaching fear I referred to earlier had become full-on incandescent fright. I tried unsuccessfully to work my hands loose. I didn’t waste my energy on that exercise for long because I recognized the cold, hard plastic feel of zip ties digging into my wrists. Although my area of expertise was civil rights, not criminal law, I knew it was not in my favour that I was bound by zip ties versus rope or rags, or whatever had come…well, to hand—pun unavoidable.
My mind raced with unwelcomed images, whether from my time spent in a courtroom or from watching Law and Order reruns, I couldn’t be sure. Four hundred and twenty pound tensile strength nylon. Some of the manufacturer’s features included but were not limited to the following: double-tooth-in-lock for extra strength, pre-set for instant submission and, of course, they met the standards for law enforcement and military apprehension applications. It was not encouraging.
Review by Lisabet Sarai
When Hallee Landry is kidnapped, cuffed, gagged and tossed into the back of a van, she has no clue why. She reasons that she may have made enemies due to her occupation as a lawyer, but the taunts of her captors suggest that the abduction is somehow connected with her First Nations ethnicity. Fortunately, the thugs are as stupid as they are vicious and she manages to escape with the help of a pair of local men who turn out to also be members of indigenous communities.
She is welcomed into a circle of remarkable individuals. Father Danny and Sister Valerie had the misfortune to be assigned to a notorious residential school during the nineteen sixties. Ethan survived the school but saw his friends and loved ones abused and murdered. Hallee learns that she too has a historical connection to South Thompson Indian Residential School. She joins Sister Valerie, Father Danny and their comrades in a plan to shine the light of truth on the long-buried crimes of the school officials. Meanwhile their enemies – the shadowy figures responsible for Hallee’s abduction – plot to undermine the community of Native American bands about to unite at a grand Pow Wow ceremony.
Kill Pocahontas offers a brutal and uncompromising account of the horrors of the residential school system. Unmarked child graves discovered at school sites throughout Canada over the past decades have revealed the genocidal scope of this shameful collaboration between government and religion. This novel, though, makes history personal by describing in unflinching detail the cruelty, bullying, violence and sexual abuse directed at children whose only fault was to be born to a First Nations family. The story revolves around the fate of Hallee’s grandmother, raped and impregnated at age eleven by a priest, then murdered to keep his secret safe. Hallee’s new comrades are determined to uncover the evidence needed to bring down that wicked cleric, now risen high in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.
This novel pulls no punches. One reason I signed up for Ray Anthony Morris’s tour is that I felt it was important to educate more people about the terrible injustices of the residential school system and the damage they caused to Native American society and culture, damage that persists even today. Kill Pocahontas succeeds in bringing these injustices to painful life. I will never forget Mr. Morris’s portrayal of the bullying nun who terrifies her charges until they lose control of their bladders, then forces them to sleep in their fouled beds, or the priest smirking as he prays over the grave of the girl he violated then had killed.
Using these historical incidents as a backdrop for a suspense plot was an audacious notion. I did not feel that this aspect of the book completely succeeded, however. While readers will applaud at the protagonists’ efforts to exact well-earned revenge on Hallee’s corrupt and mendacious grandfather, the plot becomes increasingly implausible as the novel progresses. The final resolution is pretty unbelievable.
The novel also has a tendency to divide the world and the characters into black and white. Hallee and her comrades are portrayed as warm, generous, clever, compassionate and courageous. The people working against them are arrogant, irredeemably wicked and in the case of lower-level minions, painfully dumb. While this dialectic enhances the tension between right and wrong, it is obviously an oversimplification.
In a similar vein, Mr. Morris depicts modern day law enforcement as helpful and supportive of indigenous rights. I had to wonder about this, given the complicity of provincial and national governments in the establishment and maintenance of the residential school system. I strongly suspect that the racism that fueled these abuses still exists in some quarters.
In fact, as an American, I knew very little about the background of this chapter in Canadian history. (I gather that many Canadians are similarly unaware.) Despite the novel’s literary weaknesses, it has succeeded in arousing my curiosity and encouraging me to do my own research.
I hope that anyone who reads Kill Pocahontas will have the same reaction. We cannot hope to prevent future wrongs until we understand those of the past.
About the Author
Anthony Morris was raised in the small town of Oromocto, New Brunswick. He was not raised to look the other way, not take a side, or not get involved. His friends know him as champion of fair play and an advocate for social justice and racial equality. He currently lives alone in Alberta, Canada.
This novel is a work of fiction but based on a true story that the author was simply compelled to tell.
Website: https://rayanthonymorris.com/
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/55008628.Ray_Anthony_Morris
https://amazon.com/dp/1779622139
Ray Anthony Morris will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner.
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