Motorcycles and Sweetgrass

Appearing in the Anishnawbe village of Otter Lake the day Lillian dies, the demigod Nanabush presents himself as a tall, lean, handsome white man with long, blonde hair, riding an eye-catching antique Indian Chief motorcycle, and dressed all in black. Women find him alluring, while men feel threatened by him. Evasive and contradictory, Nanabush introduces himself as “John” with different last names. Almost daily, his eye color changes too.

In mythology, Nanabush is the legendary trickster god’s Anishnawbe name, though Indigenous nations call him other things, such as Raven, Spider, or Old Man Coyote. Nanabush is impulsive and changeable: a hero one day and a villain the next, a shapeshifter who can take animal form. The one constant about Nanabush is his ability to instill uncertainty in everyone around him, forcing all to stay focused on the present.

In the novel, Nanabush’s presence in Otter Lake echoes his mythological roots—he is a destabilizing force, associated with the torrential storm he creates to say goodbye to Lillian, whom he loved passionately when she was in her mid-teens, with his willy-nilly seduction of the region’s women and teen girls, and with his ability to shake up the status quo in the lives of men like the reclusive Wayne, who rejoins society to combat Nanabush, and the adolescent Virgil, whose unambitious approach to school threatens to derail his life.