THUNDER THROUGH MY VEINS

Updated edition of the powerful 1999 coming-of-age story by award-winning Métis poet and scholar Gregory Scofield as he chronicles his journey toward self-discovery and acceptance.

Few people can justify a memoir at the age of thirty-three. Gregory Scofield is the exception, a young man who has inhabited several lives in the time most of us can manage only one. Born into a Métis family of Cree, Scottish, English and French descent but never told of his heritage, Gregory knew he was different. His father disappeared after he was born, and at five he was separated from his mother and sent to live with strangers and extended family. There began a childhood marked by constant loss, poverty, violence and self-hatred. Only his love for his sensitive but battered mother and his Aunty Georgina, a neighbor who befriended him, kept him alive.

It wasn't until he set out to search for his roots and began to chronicle his life in evocative, award-winning poetry, that he found himself released from the burdens of the past and able to draw upon the wisdom of those who went before him.

Unflinching in its detail, devastating in its emotional impact, and breathtaking in the exactness and beauty of its prose, Thunder Though My Veins is the story of a young man's quest for identity and belonging.