Split Tooth

Fact can be as strange as fiction. It can also be as dark, as violent, as rapturous. In the end, there may be no difference between them.

A girl grows up in Nunavut in the 1970s. She knows joy, & friendship, and parents' love. She knows boredom, & listlessness, & bullying. She knows the tedium of the everyday world, & the raw, amoral power of the ice & sky, the seductive energy of the animal world. She knows the ravages of alcohol, & violence at the hands of those she should be able to trust. She sees the spirits that surround her, & the immense power that dwarfs all of us.

When she becomes pregnant, she must navigate all this.

Veering back & forth between the grittiest features of a small arctic town, the electrifying proximity of the world of animals, & ravishing world of myth, Tanya Tagaq explores a world where the distinctions between good & evil, animal & human, victim & transgressor, real & imagined lose their meaning, but the guiding power of love remains.

Haunting, brooding, exhilarating, & tender all at once, Tagaq moves effortlessly between fiction and memoir, myth & reality, poetry & prose, & conjures a world & a heroine readers will never forget.