Empire of Wild

Cherie Dimaline’s wildly — no pun intended! — inventive novel, Empire of Wild, is a retelling of the traditional Métis legend of the rogarou, a werewolf-like creature. The Métis people are an Indigenous people of North America that trace their ancestry to mixed Indigenous and settler relations. The main plot of Empire of Wild is that Joan’s husband Victor disappears from their Métis town in Ontario. After nearly a year of searching for him, she finds him preaching in a revival tent — but he has no memory of who she is, or who he is. Dimaline, a Métis author, is known for her young adult books — this is her first adult novel, and she expertly weaves the modern with the traditional. For example: The sinister creature controlling her husband is doing it because he was hired by people who want to build an oil pipeline through ancestral lands.

As the NYT Book Review points out, “ in maintaining its focus primarily on Joan’s very grounded love for her husband and family, Dimaline’s novel is able to take the plot to some unexpectedly phantasmagorical places without losing sight of its emotional core.” My least favorite parts were the ones from the perspective of the rogarou — but they were overshadowed, thankfully, by the strength of the rest of the novel.

There are many different strands in this story — it’s at once a thriller, a meditation on modern geopolitics, and a dive into Indigenous history — yet Dimaline makes it fit together perfectly.

Rating: ★★★★