Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Inuvik (Apr 19/02) - A Gwich'in man has just released a novel that is being praised by many who read it.

Robert Arthur Alexie, a former airport worker, band manager and chief of the Fort McPherson Indian Band, got to hold a copy of his initial book for the first time last week.

Without government funding or outside support, Alexie has spent the past six years seeing this project through.

He started writing short stories and poems in the later part of 1980 and he'd send them to friends and co-workers.

"I'd write just for fun and fax them around to friends," he recalls.

"Around 1990, I started thinking about writing a book."

Encouraged with the praise he received from friends and family he started work on Porcupines and China Dolls in the fall of 1996.

"I sat down at the typewriter and wrote about this guy waking up after a night of partying - something I knew a lot about," he said.

"I just took it from there."

The story details the lives of two young men coming to terms with the abuse they suffered during their time spent in residential school.

He says the plot deals with some of his own experiences and some melded from those he knew.

"It's about how they deal with the past ... or how they don't, in some ways."

The title harkens back to the way the native children were made to look while attending residential school.

"The boy's hair was shaved off and the girl's was cut in bangs -- all squared off -- and everybody dressed the same," he said.

While writing Alexie had three endings he'd played with, but settled on one that leaves the conclusion to interpretation.

"I guess that's up to the reader to decide," he says. "It's a tragedy that could lead to a happy ending."

Once the book was finished, Alexie hit the Internet. He searched out seemingly every book publisher in Canada and sent out his pitch.

"I sent everyone of them a letter and a chapter from the book," he said. "Then I sat back and waited for all the rejection letters.

"Everyone I sent it to, rejected it."

While in a treatment centre in 1993, Alexie met a therapist named Doug Smith.

Following his treatment, Alexie moved back to Fort McPherson and later invited the therapist up for a visit. Smith like the North so much he moved up and ran the healing program for a year.

Smith had some connections in the Toronto theatre and movie industry and he showed Alexie's manuscript to a literary agent named Michael Levine.

"He took it to Stoddart and from there, everything fell into place in about three months," he said.

Publisher gets interested

Near the end of July 2000, Alexie received an e-mail from Levine saying he had an offer.

A company in Saskatchewan also expressed some interest, but Alexie chose Stoddart because they are more established and have a wider distribution network.

The publisher assigned Alexie an editor who sent the manuscript back to him to edit it down from the 700 pages to just under 300.

Despite the contract, advance and actually holding his published book for the first time last week, Alexie says the dream still feels like a dream.

"It still hasn't sunk in yet," he laughs.

He gave the first copy to his daughter who is credited on the book's jacket with the photo of the author.

Alexie had given her a copy of the manuscript, but she wasn't interested. He says she feels differently about the published work.

"She's already read about 50 pages this morning," he beamed.

Last year he began work on his second novel. He says the next book is quite a departure from the first.

The new one is about a brother and sister who are removed from their Northern homes and raised down south.

The sister stays, but the brother returns to the North, where he meets a woman and a secret is revealed, but that's all the author will hint at for now.

Boreal Books in Inuvik is taking orders.