Fairly mixed feelings about this. It's about a First Nations boy growing up in the BC and Washington interior in the 1950s and '60s, from age five through high school, and I kind of had "It's Grim Up North" stuck in my head for a lot of it. The writing is often beautiful and poignant, and the author has an incredible eye for details of characterisation. The community and family felt so vivid that this had more of a feeling of a memoir than that of a novel. The main character's mother, especially, shines as the portrait of a woman who's devoted to her sons, but doesn't have the emotional vocabulary to express that in any way other than tough love and personal sacrifice.

Which is to say: holy shit, this book is depressing. No good deed goes unpunished, kindness is rewarded with despair, the dog absolutely will die, as well as most of the characters you like, and the suffering mostly goes to show that "what doesn't kill you makes you a monster." I think it stays well clear of poverty/tragedy porn just by how stripped down and honest it feels, and how it takes the discrimination and realities of the era undramatically and head on, but it's a pretty rough go.