I could not put this book down! It was very eye opening, heart wrenching with a side of hope as well. Told by four rotating point of views of a three generation Métis family. This book deals with sensitive subjects like racism, addiction, losing children to foster care and how trauma can spread over generations. The character development was amazing and the characters really felt brought to life; even the side characters. This book really painted a vivid picture of what it is like to live in rural Manitoba as Métis. It was gut wrenching hearing the women talk of trying to "pass" as white and how no matter how hard they tried, they could not. It was really eye opening how much someone who isn't a minority has privilege, just because of the colour of their skin. I am very glad I have read this book and also learned immensely from it too. I highly recommend it!

I grew up in Winnipeg and this story felt so real to me. Katherena Vermette's writing is so truthful and realistic that you feel like you know the characters. It is a heart breaking look at the way Canada's Indigenous and Metis population have been treated.

Absolutely incredible book that grabs you from the very first page. The way the author weaves together the characters and the way they tell their stories makes this book impossible to put down. I was recommending this book to friends before I was even halfway through.

4.5 stars - this is powerful. Ms. Vermette has a way of writing characters that is incredibly real. These women's voices were raw, heartbreaking and sometimes difficult to read, but it was powerful. This is a book about 3 generations of women and their stories, struggles and survival. They are sad, angry, in pain and still there is hope there. The characters intersect The Break and I loved the perspective that every person is not the same person to everyone - someone may be hard to love, or done something terrible, but they are still someone's mom, sister, grandma. Read The Break and then this. I couldn't help being angry, hopeful, crying - this got me everywhere, you will root for these women.

I appreciated the 4 distinct perspectives in the books and I have such a soft spot for Cedar Sage.

This novel shares the interwoven stories of 4 women who have faced more than their fair share of challenges. With intergenerational trauma at the forefront, you can't deny how raw and relevant this novel is. I couldn't help but feel for each character and their separate, and sometimes shared experiences. The novel emphasizes the power and importance of women in the family.

I haven't read The Break, but can say that Katherena Vermette is now at the top of my must-read list. I'm looking forward to reading more of her work. For those who appreciate novels like Birdie or Five Little Indians, you will certainly love this one.

The Strangers by Katherina Vermette is one of Canada's most anticipated novels for the fall. A follow-up to The Break, which came out in 2016, this book is just as intense and important.

"Cedar has nearly forgotten what her family looks like. Phoenix has nearly forgotten what freedom feels like. And Elsie has nearly given up hope. Nearly."

There is so much to absorb in Vermette's writing. Her unwillingness to make her stories comfortable reflects her dedication to the truth of how Indigenous populations have been impacted within this country. It's truly meaningful in helping those outside Indigenous cultures to recognize the deep and long-standing harm that colonization has instilled as well as getting a clear picture of how and why intergenerational trauma exists and can't be overlooked.

"A breathtaking companion to her bestselling debut The Break, Vermette’s The Strangers brings readers into the dynamic world of the Stranger family, the strength of their bond, the shared pain in their past, and the light that beckons from the horizon. This is a searing exploration of race, class, inherited trauma, and matrilineal bonds that—despite everything—refuse to be broken."

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House Canada for the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this book.

3.5 Stars

The novel focuses on four women, representing three generations, of a Métis family living in Winnipeg.
Margaret is a sad, angry woman whose dreams were derailed because of a pregnancy. Her daughter Elsie has lost three children to the foster care system; she wants to be reunited with them but she is struggling with addiction. Elsie’s daughter Phoenix is incarcerated; as the novel opens she is pregnant. Cedar-Sage is Phoenix’s younger sister who has spent most of her life in foster homes but is given an opportunity to move in with her long-absent father.

The title is perfect. The family surname is Stranger, but the four women have also become strangers to each other. Margaret is a distant mother who had little time for Elsie when she was a child; in fact, Elsie was raised more by Margaret’s mother Annie. As a result, Elsie is disconnected from her mother, and because of her drug usage, she has lost her children. Cedar-Sage tries to connect with both Phoenix and Elsie but the behaviour of her sister and her mother make this difficult. There are also secrets and misunderstandings.

Men in the novel are not portrayed very positively. Several of the men live the criminal lifestyle, in and out of prison. Other men just disappear. Margaret has not heard from one of her sons for years, and Cedar-Sage’s father abandoned her to her mother’s care. Elsie drifts from one man to another, but most eventually disappear from her life. One who does come back into her life periodically is not a positive influence.

This is not an easy read. There are so many broken characters with broken relationships and unhappy lives. The consequences of trauma can be clearly seen in ensuing generations. The book even opens with a trigger warning: triggers “include depictions of child apprehension, solitary incarceration, suicide ideation, some drug use, and some physical violence.” Though the author adds that she did “try to cram as much love and hope in between as possible,” I found little hope. Cedar-Sage may perhaps be able to achieve what Margaret hoped to accomplish because she does have more of a support system, but the bonds she wants to forge with family members will probably not be possible. There is love, but love alone is not enough to solve the problems.

There are a lot of characters and a family tree would have been helpful. The tree that is provided is unclear; of course, I read a pre-publication galley so hopefully this problem will be rectified. Characters that appear in this novel also appear in Vermette’s debut novel, The Break. I would recommend that people first read The Break because much is explained that would clarify the reasons for people’s behaviour in The Strangers. For instance, The Strangers does not explain why Phoenix is in jail, other than “Phoenix did a horrible thing and is in jail for a long time.” We are also told that she is on the sex offenders list. Knowing Phoenix and Elsie’s backstories would be helpful.

Like The Break, this book is unflinching in its gaze at life for contemporary Indigenous women in urban Canada. It is very real and honest, often brutally so. It is not a book that readers will enjoy, though it is a book that deserves to be read.

Note: I received a digital galley from the publisher via NetGalley.

Vermette did not disappoint with this companion novel of The Break. Giving us insight into the life of the family of the Strangers over the span of 5 years after Phoenix is sentenced for her crime and having stories from her, her sister Cedar-Sage, mom Elsie, and grandmother Margaret, we get an intimate look at how intergenerational traumas, expectations, grief, and love can filter through and affect the lives of so many. I truly enjoyed getting to know Cedar-Sage, watching Phoenix grow through her prison sentence, watch Elsie do the best she could as both a mother and a person with an addiction who lacked the love and support to get help. Gritty, incredibly written, and hopeful.

I finished one of my most anticipated books of the year last night and it did not disappoint.

Told from alternating POVs of two sisters, their mother and their grandmother of a Métis family with the last name of Stranger. Phoenix is serving a sentence in a juvenile institution and her sister begins the book in one of the foster care homes she has been in. Elsie is battling her demons and trying to fight an addiction in the middle of a town where she frequents the same people, places and things. - a recipe for an uphill battle. Margaret is estranged from her daughter and learns of a new birth in the family from her mother. All of these characters will have to have to move boulders from their way to push past what they have endured and come out whole.

The Strangers is a companion book to The Break (published in 2016). I read The Break in February of 2017 and while bits of it have stayed with me, including the experience of reading it, details have been forgotten. It is not necessary to have read The Break first but I think it adds to layers within The Strangers. I wish I had reread The Break more recently.

I am very thankful for the family tree at the beginning of the book to help me keep the multitude of characters straight. There are a couple of names that belong to two characters and thus really helped.

Themes of both connection and estrangement, intergenerational experience, trauma, loss and tradition flow through the story. The story is told over five years and includes the current pandemic within them subtly.

The characters are often set up to fail by systems. One example was the comments made by the character Elsie in the novel who talks about the requirement of a home for the system to give her her children but to get a home you need the children who are going to live there first. An impossible situation.

Motherhood and its many joys and frustrations was tackled expertly. The character of Margaret had some especially difficult views for me. It is not until later in the novel where we are told by her uncle Toby where Margaret comes from and how she is different than she appears. I cried during several scenes in this book and most of them involved children.

Thank you to @netgalley and @penguinhamishhamilton for this ARC in exchange for my honest opinions. The Strangers publishes September 28, 2021.

This book is spectacular! If you loved The Break you will not want to miss Vermette's second novel! The Strangers is the story of a Métis family set in the North End of Winnipeg, told in alternating narratives by three generations of Stranger women. It is a raw, heart rending story, both rich and at times brutally honest, revealing its intricacies slowly and with deep honour for the fractured, seemingly broken characters.

Elsie and her two daughters are fighting to survive in a system that sets them up to fail. This is not a happy story. It is a sprawling story of derailed dreams, drug addiction, children in care, prison, entrenched systemic racism, and all the ways we let each other down. And yet it isn't devoid of hope, of love, of small beautiful moments of deep connectedness amongst all the pain.

Vermette's characters are so well drawn you will at times forget the story is fiction. A truly fantastic author! By far one of the best books I have read this year.

I really enjoyed The Strangers for a number of reasons. First of all, it takes place in my home town, which makes it extra special - I know many of the landmarks mentioned in the story and felt that I could relate to the characters on a deeper level because of this connection to place. I also believe it is an excellent own voices story that teaches the reader about what it's like being an Indigenous person in Canada in modern day; author Katherena Vermette does an excellent job at illustrating this through each one of the women in the story. Each of the women from the Stranger family experience the repercussions of the generational trauma so often mentioned in relation to the Indigenous experience, in her own way. Vermette manages to deftly illustrate the subtleties of each woman's unique perspective and experience, yet maintain a smooth flow and natural unfolding of a story with a beginning, middle and end. This book is a follow up to Vermette's 2016 hit The Break, however, it could easily be read as a stand alone novel. This is one of those novels that makes you uncomfortable, and forces you to step back and put yourself in the shoes of someone else, if only for a little while. I will continue to mull over all the lessons of this story, and let them sink in to better understand generational trauma and the reconciliation movement, and I will be recommending this to all of my friends and family so they can do the same.

An interesting book told by 4 different viewpoints, The Strangers follows 4 different women in the Metis family. Each one has a unique story to tell and I was captivated by all. There were times when I felt like I was missing something, but that could have been just my distracted brain.

The Strangers tells the story of four generations of a Métis family (the “Strangers” of the title), as told in rotating POVs by four women of the family (a grandmother, her daughter, and two teenaged sisters from the third generation). It wasn’t until after I finished this that I realised that one of these teenagers was a central character in Katherena Vermette’s last novel (The Break) — and while it isn’t necessary to have read one before the other, I had some questions cleared up once I made that connection. Once again, Vermette has created a roster of incredibly real characters whose stories touched my heart (I was in tears, more than once, over moments of simple human connection), and once again, she has taught me what it is like to live as a member of the urban Métis community of Winnipeg — the pressures, stresses, and prejudices unique to this particular racialised group — without me, as a citizen of the dominant, settler culture of Canada, feeling blamed or vilified. The Strangers touched me emotionally, taught me intellectually, and was a satisfying literary journey; this is everything I love in a book.