An audio book.
Alice, 13, lives on a Mohawk Reservation - Six Nations. She fancies Mason. She's babysitting, and has invited him to join her. She wants to lose her virginity like her friends have. But watching Pocahontas, she and the TV start talking together. Pocahontas tells her to not to let Mason in. She does what she's told.
Her gran was a medicine woman, in touch with spirits. Her mother dies. She marries Steve (a white academic who's learning Mohawk) and moves out of the reservation, befriending neighbour Megan. Toronto. Alice has a baby, Dawn, and post-natal depression. She thinks Dawn likes Steve more than her (everybody likes Steve). When Steve introduced her to colleagues, he says she was writing a novel which was a rewriting of a creation story. She thinks Steve misses his colleague's micro-aggressions against her. She talks with trees, with a cockroach. She begins to think that building her life around Steve is a big mistake. Did he marry her just so he could learn about her culture and further his career? Is he gaslighting her?
She sees Mason in a shop. She hides her ring and flirts. She supplied her mother with the drugs she overdosed with. Now she tries drugs and vodka herself.
We jump 2 generations ahead, to her grand-daughter who has followed in her footsteps. We learn that Alice survived her suicide attempt and published her work. It was her grand-daughter who spoke to her from the future via the Pocahontas image, and who saved her from suicide.
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