Thunder Through My Veins Memories Of A Métis Childhood

From Amazon Thunder Through My Veins will be particularly resonant for those who have struggled to trace their roots or wrestled with their identity. Author Gregory Scofield is a young Metis writer, playwright, and poet living in Vancouver. His father, a notorious con man and fugitive, was on trial the day Scofield was born; he witnessed his son's birth under police guard. Scofield's mother disappeared from his life when he was five years old. She suffered from lupus, but doctors misdiagnosed her with mental illness and subjected her to over 70 electric shock treatments. Previously loving and kind, she was a changed woman on her return, her speech slow and methodical. As Scofield recounts in Thunder Through My Veins, he managed to regain a sense of himself by tracing connections to his family's past and to the history of his people. His is a heart-wrenching story, but it's also one of great inspiration. "I often wonder if the secrecy of Mom's life, even my own, began with the shame my grandfather carried throughout his life for being Metis," he writes. Scofield rediscovered the love of literature he first felt at his mother's side when she read to him as a child. He started writing himself; Thunder Through My Veins is his fifth book. "This is my story of survival and acceptance, of myself and my widening family," he writes. "I write it for all of you who have survived and for those of you struggling to survive." --Alex Roslin