“Back to the Red Road: A Story of
Survival, Redemption and Love”
Reviewed by:
Christine Smith (McFarlane)
“Back To The Red Road: A Story of Survival, Redemption and Love” is a memoir co-written by authors
Florence Kaefer and Edward Gamblin. It examines each author’s respective
journeys to reconciliation, redemption and love after each survives the
residential school era. Kaefer is a teacher during that era and Gamblin is a
student.
Kaefer is just
nineteen when she accepts a job as a teacher at Norway House Indian Residential
School. She states that she was not fully aware of the conditions in which the
children lived in at the school, but littered throughout her story are some
snippets of what she remembers as a teacher at that time. How can she not be aware
when she when she points out an incident of “when a little boy came back after
lunch crying,” and when asking the other students what was wrong? They stated,
“Mr. Plint had boxed the boy’s ears,” She further states that she confronted
the teacher responsible for this child crying and the teacher paid no attention
to her request to leave her children alone.
There is other
evidence throughout Back to the Red Road that makes me question how Kaefer can
purport to not know about the abuse the residential school children went
through when she reconnects with her former student Edward Gamblin, and is not
only told about the abuses he went through but as a singer he sings about it in
various cds that Kaefer comes to own.
Gamblin is five
years old when he enters the Norway House Indian Residential School, and though
he has been out of residential school for years, you can still hear his pain as
he recounts certain events to Kaefer, such as various beatings and being
sexually assaulted by one of the priests at the school.
It is after Kaefer
is reunited with Gamblin, hears his stories and hears other residential school
survivor’s stories that she feels motivated to apologize on behalf of the
school and her colleagues.
“Back to the Red Road: A Story of Survival,
Redemption and Love” is
a heartbreaking read, and as a survivor of abuse, I found it at times to be
quite triggering and difficult to digest.
Back to the Red
Road: A Story of Survival, Redemption and Love is published by Caitlin Press
and is 207 pages. ISBN: 13:978-1—927575-37-6
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