The Break

Longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award 2018

Crime Book of the Month, Sunday Times, February 2018



'A tough, close-up look at a side of female life that's often hard to acknowledge: the violence girls and women sometimes display towards other girls and women ... An accomplished writer who will go far.' - Margaret Atwood





Stella, a young Métis mother, lives with her family by the Break, an isolated strip of land on the edge of their small Canadian town. Glancing out of her window one winter's evening Stella spots someone in trouble; horrified, she calls the police. But when they arrive, no one is there, scuff marks in the compacted snow the only sign anything may have happened.





What follows is a heartbreaking and powerful tale of a community in crisis as the people connected to the victim, a young girl on the edge of a precipice, begin to lay bare their stories leading up to that fateful night. From Lou, a social worker grappling with the end of a relationship, to Cheryl, an artist mourning the premature death of her sister. And from Phoenix, a homeless teenager released from a youth detention centre with no one to turn to, to Officer Scott, a Métis policeman caught between two worlds.





Through the prism of one extended, intergenerational family, Vermette's urgent story shines a light on the power, violence and love shared between women of all cultures, creeds and ages.



Katherena Vermette is a Métis writer from Treaty One territory, the heart of the Métis nation, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Her first book, North End Love Songs,won the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry in 2013. Her novel, TheBreak was bestseller in Canada and won multiple awards, including the 2017 Amazon.ca First Novel Award. Ms Vermette is also the author of the children's picture book series, The Seven Teachings Stories, and recently published the first book, Pemmican Wars, in the young adult book series, A Girl Called Echo. Ms Vermette's second book of poetry, river woman, will be published in the fall of 2018. In film, her documentary, this river, won the 2017 Canadian Screen Award for Best Short.



A tough, close-up look at a side of female life that's often hard to acknowledge: the violence girls and women sometimes display towards other girls and women ... An accomplished writer who will go far.



Katherena Vermette is a tremendously gifted writer, a dazzling talent... The lives of the girls and women in The Break are not easy, but their voices are complex, urgent, and unsparing. Vermette lays bare what it means to survive, not only once, but multiple times, against the forces of private and national histories.



A dazzling debut... Vermette doesn't shy away from the harsh realities of Metis women's lives. The Break is a terrific achievement, combining passages of lyrical prose with a compelling account of the way violent crime warps the lives of several generations.



Vermette is a staggering talent. Reading The Break is like a revelation; stunning, heartbreaking and glorious. From her exquisitely rendered characters to her fully realized world and the ratcheting tension, I couldn't put it down. Absolutely riveting.



The Break is... a beautiful love song of desire to live a full and rich life as cherished women ? even when we cannot have that... Vermette captures the reader from beginning to end. The Break is unforgettable.



The Break is a powerful, persuasive novel about the strength and love that bind these women to each other and to the men in their lives... Although this is a novel of social importance, it transcends politics, taking the reader on a journey to the heart of what it means for one person to care about another, survive trauma, and endure.



I love a book that takes me to a new place, a world I know nothing about - and so it is with The Break by the Canadian writer Katherena Vermette.