The Shoe Boy: A Trapline Memoir

“Duncan McCue is one of the most profound and sensitive writers I’ve had the pleasure of reading. And The Shoe Boy is that rare little gem of a book. It’s indelible.”

—Joseph Boyden, Giller Prize-winning author of The Orenda

This memoir of five months in a hunting cabin with a James Bay Cree family is a new classic of First Nations literature, written by the CBC’s Duncan McCue. McCue is Anishinaabe, a member of the Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation in southern Ontario. In The Shoe Boy he renders a beautiful sketch of the landscape and culture of the Cree, a nation still recovering from the massive James Bay hydroelectric project of the ‘70s.

Frank, funny and evocative, The Shoe Boy deftly entwines the challenges of identity for First Nations youth, the sexual frustration and hopeful confusion of the teenage years, and the realities of living in an enduring state of culture shock.