Drew Hayden Taylor: The Wanderer

[bibliogramma]

the story that unfolds in Drew Hayden Taylor's The Wanderer: A Native Gothic Novel, is on the surface quite simple. Once, long ago, an adventurous young Anishnabe boy ran away from his home and persuded fur traders to take him to Montreal; from there he was taien to France as an amusement for the court of the King. Soon enough he discovered that he longed to be home again, but instead he fell sick with a disease his people had never been exposed to - measles - and as he lay dying, something else his people had never known came to him and gave him a second life as a vampire. Now, some 350 years later, Pierre L'Errant has finally come home to the modern-day reserve of Otter Lake, where his village once stood. And here he changes the future of an unhappy young Anishnabe girl who sees nothing in her life worth living for.

A fascinating blending of an ancient European myth-figure and a contemporary coming-of-age and dealing with trauma YA story, the overriding theme that brings both vampire and human teen together is the need to reconnect to one's roots, one's culture, one's history. For the vampire, the connection is what allows him, at last, to die. For the teenager, a vision of the history and place she shares with her ancestors gives her the desire to live.