| Fiction is reality for Canadian author Richard Wagamese. Throughout his life, no matter what was going on, he’s sat in libraries, letting his curiosity about the world teach him everything he wanted to know.
"When I started to read fiction, it blew my mind, the millions of ways in which people could tell stories," he says.
Since 1978, Wagamese has been writing to "create a body of work that makes understanding and appreciating native culture, spirituality, philosophy and living imminently accessible by wrapping a tradition of love, belonging community and identity up in fictional characters." His intention is to create a bubble of energy in the reader’s imagination, enabling them to translate his stories into their daily lives – and maybe find healing while they’re at it.
His latest book, Dream Wheels (Doubleday Canada, 416 pp.), was inspired by a 2003 visit with Maynard McRae Jr., a native bull rider in his second year of medical school and his family on their ranch in B.C. Richard was working on a documentary for APTN on native youth role models and although he thought the documentary was good, the influence of the rodeo family didn’t leave him, and Dream Wheels started to form.
The novel tells the story of two families – the multi-generational Wolfchild family, whose adult son Joe Willie has been left fractured both physically and spiritually just as he was about to claim his title as "all-around rodeo champion," and Claire and Aiden, a mother and son from the city who survive off grit but have no centre of balance. The families are thrown together when Aiden is released from jail after a botched robbery attempt and is invited to spend some time with the Wolfchilds.
"It’s a story of the communal joining on the universal tradition that heals people. A dream wheel is the sum total of history, dreams, and storytelling – the way of a people," says Wagamese. The dream wheel in this story is a beaten-down old truck that has taken the Wolfchilds down the roads they’ve needed to travel for the rodeo for generations, holding their stories and their hopes. Joe Willie starts rebuilding the truck as he’s rebuilding himself, facing his personal vehicle of family tradition, while working through his anger and loss of the rodeo. Meanwhile, Aiden is learning how to confront his own emotions through the challenges presented to him while developing himself as a bull rider.
Throughout this process the two men are confronted with their own symbols of protection and strength, giving them permission to be present in their emotions, telling them, according to the author, "This is where you are, so don’t try to pretend you’re someone else. Be in this. It’s OK. We’re given anger for a reason. It cleanses us. It allows us to become more gentle, but you’ve got to get through it first. It’s OK to be ripped inside, just proceed. I’ll take care of you."
In the series of inner confrontations that ensue, Wagamese brings elements of the community involved in his own healing into the novel. The women who taught him "what it takes to be courageous, strong, resilient and self-searching," hold a particularly loud voice in this novel. "The women that I’ve met who have educated me politically, in what tradition, spirituality, honour and respect really mean, not just as pushing words out of your lungs, but what they really mean as a living, breathing reality today – I really wanted to honour that. So when I came to writing the female characters in Dream Wheels, the characters basically stepped up to me with what they wanted me to say about them. I was taking dictation from every female human being I’d ever known."
Richard Wagamese is as quietly challenging as his books. The challenge is to let your imagination share the common experience of curiosity and language, loss and emotion. To bring us closer to accepting ourselves and the people constantly streaming around us. His novels aren’t escape, they’re an experience, a medium to share facts, ideas and tradition through stories. Dream Wheels represents a collective tradition of healing for Richard Wagamese and he would like to share it with you. |
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