Joseph Boyden's first novel is the story of two Cree friends, Xavier and Elijah, who leave their pristine northern country to end up in the horrifi...
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Mar 12, 2009
Bonnie
rated it: 
5 stars
I'm not sure I've read any other books inspired by the First World War, but I am sure Joseph's story is different than anything else ever written.
Agreed, I was slow to get TO it (heard him read first chapter in Whistler 2007), and to really get into it, but oh -- when I did, I couldn't turn the pages fast enough!
I read this, for the most part, on the beach while vacationing in Mexico. I couldn't help but react out loud: his battle scenes, e.g., are so More...
I'm not sure I've read any other books inspired by the First World War, but I am sure Joseph's story is different than anything else ever written.
Agreed, I was slow to get TO it (heard him read first chapter in Whistler 2007), and to really get into it, but oh -- when I did, I couldn't turn the pages fast enough!
I read this, for the most part, on the beach while vacationing in Mexico. I couldn't help but react out loud: his battle scenes, e.g., are so More...
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Sep 02, 2008
Ruzz
rated it:
I found Three Day Road when a notoriously late friend was more than an hour late to meet me and I had time to browse a local bookstore. I didn't pick the book up that day, but i noted it.
Later, while near the bookstore I went back in and grabbed it. The idea of the book crossed a number of vectors of interest for me. War history (wait, don't stop reading yet), snipers (please, keep reading), and early 20th century Natives.
I expected it to at least titillate my love of s More...
Later, while near the bookstore I went back in and grabbed it. The idea of the book crossed a number of vectors of interest for me. War history (wait, don't stop reading yet), snipers (please, keep reading), and early 20th century Natives.
I expected it to at least titillate my love of s More...
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Feb 11, 2008
Malcolm
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Book Review: Three Day Road
Joseph Boyden
Viking Canada Penguin 2005
ISBN 0-670-06362-2
Once in a long while one reads a book that you cannot put down and the overall beauty of it leaves one gasping. Three Day Road, is such a book. The story of Two cree young men who find themselves in WW I fighting in the trenches of France as snipers using their hunting and shooting skills they learned in the bush growing up near James Bay.
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Joseph Boyden
Viking Canada Penguin 2005
ISBN 0-670-06362-2
Once in a long while one reads a book that you cannot put down and the overall beauty of it leaves one gasping. Three Day Road, is such a book. The story of Two cree young men who find themselves in WW I fighting in the trenches of France as snipers using their hunting and shooting skills they learned in the bush growing up near James Bay.
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Jul 20, 2009
Capitu
rated it:
I love this book. It is definitely in the pack of books I would carry with me from a burning building. I read it 2 years ago or so, and recently browsed through it again for a book club discussion. I feel surprised with myself that a book with so many graphic descriptions of battles and death does not however make me put it on the list of books never to reread. For all the sadness and destruction it describes, still it does not leave me downhearted. I guess I see the characters' struggles as an
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(4 people liked it)
Feb 06, 2012
Toni
rated it: 
I learned much from this book. I learned about trench warfare, the primary method of fighting in World War One. I learned about the Native American bush Indians of Canada and the hardships and racism that they survived. I learned that the white americans admired their hunting and tracking skills and transformed these individuals from hunters of animals into hunters of men during the war and the toll on their spirit that this transformation wrought.
I learned that every war through history ha More...
I learned that every war through history ha More...
Dec 29, 2011
Julie
rated it:
Xavier Bird, a young Ojibwa from the Moose Cree tribe in northern Ontario, returns to Canada from the Europe's Western Front in the summer of 1919. He is alone, in unimaginable pain from an amputated leg, addicted to morphine, and dying from a spirit broken by the nightmare of war.
Carrying him home in her dugout canoe is his aunt Niska, an elderly medicine woman who has lived on her own in the bush since escaping a Catholic boarding school in her teens. Through a twisting, dreamlike More...
Carrying him home in her dugout canoe is his aunt Niska, an elderly medicine woman who has lived on her own in the bush since escaping a Catholic boarding school in her teens. Through a twisting, dreamlike More...
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Jan 09, 2008
Jackie
rated it:
I first heard about this book a couple years ago on the Today show. At first it was hard to take a Today show book club selection seriously, but then I decided to listen to what the star author had to say about the book. Isabel Allende introduced Three Day Road, and her enthusiasm for the story really intrigued me. She writes in a completely different genre (magical realism) from what she decribed this book to be (WWI historical fiction), so I thought I should give it a shot. And I decided to wa
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Oct 30, 2007
minnie
rated it:
A friend recommended this book and lent me her copy.If I had seen it in a bookshop I would never have picked it up because the cover and typeface(on my edition)suggests a romantic novel.The story follows Niska a cree medicine woman who lives in the Bush,bringing her injured morphine addicted nephew back home after world war I.This book I found very moving and horrific in its descriptions of the trenches and the young men who went to war and came back ghosts of their former selves.The description
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Apr 20, 2010
Joyce
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War is ugly and always has been; people die and usually gruesomely. But there seems to be a general consensus that the most horror-filled war was The Great War, The War to End All Wars--World War I. Not before or since have armies been mired down in trenches, where it was possible to die from drowning in mud, never mind from bullets or artillery. Being static--unable to move, to have at least the illusion of dodging incoming artillery--did something to the psyches of the soldiers who fought i
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Apr 03, 2009
Catherine
rated it:
This is an exceptional book, although harrowing - I'm not sure I could say I enjoyed it; my feeling is closer to respect, and admiration, for what the author achieved.
Three Day Road is the story of two young Cree men who volunteer for service in WWI. Only one returns - Xavier - and the novel follows his progress as he travels back downriver, with his aunt, to his home. He's broken, physically and mentally, by the war, is addicted to morphine, and as he slips back into the past and More...
Three Day Road is the story of two young Cree men who volunteer for service in WWI. Only one returns - Xavier - and the novel follows his progress as he travels back downriver, with his aunt, to his home. He's broken, physically and mentally, by the war, is addicted to morphine, and as he slips back into the past and More...
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Feb 12, 2012
Charra
rated it: 
Three stories intertwine in this work of historically-based fiction. Xavier Bird and Elijah Whiskeyjack, both Oji-Cree boys, leave their home in the bush of Northern Ontario and become sharpshooters in the Great War. Returning maimed and alone in 1919, Xavier is met by his aunt Niska who paddles him home in her canoe. As they travel upriver, he relives his grimly heroic story through flashbacks, while his aunt Niska relates to him the story of her life and of his. By reminding Xavier of his tru
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Jan 26, 2012
Joanne
rated it:
As I read through the posted reviews of this book I came across the following one written by, "Lisa". I share it with my followers:
Xavier Bird is a haunted man. Sick in body and soul, he is coming home to Canada to die. He is returning from the WWI battlefields of Ypres and the Somme, and, although he enlisted with his best friend, Elijah, he is coming home alone. Xavier is met at the train station in Northern Ontario by his Auntie Niska, a Oji-Cree medicine woman who raised More...
Xavier Bird is a haunted man. Sick in body and soul, he is coming home to Canada to die. He is returning from the WWI battlefields of Ypres and the Somme, and, although he enlisted with his best friend, Elijah, he is coming home alone. Xavier is met at the train station in Northern Ontario by his Auntie Niska, a Oji-Cree medicine woman who raised More...
Jan 22, 2012
Wanda
rated it:
Mark's review says it all so I added it here. But I enjoyed this book because it was a Canadian story, Boyden created such rich and vivid images that I was there every moment (what a wonder writer) and I learned so much about WW1. I had no idea about how close the fighting men were to each other, that life in the tenches really was "in the tenches" or that death was so up close and personal. This was a real WW1 education for me that I will not be forgetting and for this I thank Boyden.
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Dec 07, 2011
Lisa
rated it:
Xavier Bird is a haunted man. Sick in body and soul, he is coming home to Canada to die. He is returning from the WWI battlefields of Ypres and the Somme, and, although he enlisted with his best friend, Elijah, he is coming home alone. Xavier is met at the train station in Northern Ontario by his Auntie Niska, a Oji-Cree medicine woman who raised Elijah and him. Together they set off upriver on a three day journey home.
Trying to pull him back to the world, Niska begins talking, weaving More...
Trying to pull him back to the world, Niska begins talking, weaving More...
Aug 30, 2011
Gem
rated it:
It’s hard to say that I really “enjoyed” this novel, because a lot of it is quite dark and depressing. Although the story alternates between Xavier and Niska, a good 85% of the book takes place on the warfront. Boyden’s descriptions of being in the war are horrific, especially Elijah’s downward spiral; he really pulls the reader into the war without making it about the action or the weapons or any of the other glamorized parts of war.
Interestingly enough, this novel is inspired by a tr More...
Interestingly enough, this novel is inspired by a tr More...
Jan 26, 2011
Darryl
rated it:
“Three Day Road”, by Joseph Boyden is a story about Xavier Bird and Elijah Whiskeyjack, two Cree native north Americans from upper parts of Ontario province, and their misshapen lives during World War I. Xavier was brought up by his aunt as a bush Indian, living off the land, away from civilization, except for a brief stint in a Toronto school run by nuns. Elijah spent many years in such a school and was fluent in English and much better understood the ways of the white man. Elijah eventual
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Jan 08, 2011
Larry
rated it:
Joseph Boyden portrays the harsh realities of both the WWI trench warfare experience and the everyday lives of the Cree in northern Ontario during the same period.
There Day Road chronicles the lives of two Cree boys who join the army and are subsequently thrown into the horrors of the war. Being raised in the bush and both excellent marksmen, they become snipers – with Xavier being more ambivalent about killing people, while his friend Elijah adapts enthusiastically. Trying to More...
Jan 04, 2011
Naomi
rated it:
I found myself struck by Boyden's repetition of words, particularly the colour red. Indeed, I kept mentally comparing it to my (admittedly rather hazy, as I read it in the first year of my undergrad) recollection of Timothy Findley's The Wars. This comparison was fostered by both texts' complicated relationship with horses, and in what I would argue are similar ways. Findley's descriptions of red are multifoliate, using a wide range of Anglo-specific terms for the different reds of the battlefie
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Dec 12, 2010
Mrsgaskell
rated it:
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers.
To view it, click here
Jul 14, 2010
Leila
rated it:
An astonishing book. Powerful, beautiful and compelling, this is a harrowing tale of almost relentless emotional horror and hardship sprinkled with delicate scenes of heartbreaking beauty. It would be hard to say that I 'enjoyed' this book, but I truly was utterly absorbed by it. In an intense three-day obsession I read it on the bus (missing my stop), at work (extending my lunch break) and curled in a corner at home. Even in public I was unable to hide my frequent tears.
Boyden' More...
Boyden' More...
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Mar 05, 2010
Quinten
rated it:
Xavier en Elijah, twee indiaanse vrienden, worden uitgezonden naar Europa, waar de Eerste Wereldoorlog woedt. Ze zijn jong en argeloos. Elijah raakt geobsedeerd door het spel van dood en verderf; al snel wordt hij de meest gevreesde sluipschutter van het bataljon. Zijn faam maakt hem een held in de ogen van zijn medesoldaten. Xavier worstelt juist met de verschrikkingen van de oorlog en de vele doden die hij op zijn geweten heeft. Als Elijahs moed omslaat in wreedheid en waanzin, beseft Xavier d
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Oct 25, 2009
Lisa
rated it:
Three Day Road is a very heavy read. It is about two Cree Soldiers in the Canadian military during World War I, the descent into madness by one, and the power of love from an Auntie who saves the other.
This is Boyden's debut novel and is a compelling read that successfully weaves the past, present and the storylines of Xavier with Elijah during the war, and with Xavier and Niska, his Aunt, in the "present." I found I needed to be in the right frame of mind to read it, a More...
This is Boyden's debut novel and is a compelling read that successfully weaves the past, present and the storylines of Xavier with Elijah during the war, and with Xavier and Niska, his Aunt, in the "present." I found I needed to be in the right frame of mind to read it, a More...
Sep 26, 2010
Shirley
rated it:
This book is so powerful and gripping and so very real that it is difficult to read it. Boyden takes us right into the French and Belgian trenches during the First World War. We are there and we experience the fear and the agony of this terrible war. The story is really about two young Indian boys who are friends and who enlist and go to the War together. The war changes these young Canadian boys. One (Elijah) becomes a warrior and goes hunting at night. The more Germans that he kills the darker
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Sep 25, 2009
Devin
rated it:
An outstanding read that unfolds through the voices of two narrators telling a story that straddles the world of the Northern Ontario Cree living in the bush by Hudson Bay and a soldier fighting in the trenches of World War I. The transitions between the canoe ride back home as a returning wounded soldier and his life in battle are incredible. Particularly this one, a paragraph that moves seamlessly between the two settings of this novel:
Niska hums a song to herself as she paddles. More...
Niska hums a song to herself as she paddles. More...
Sep 25, 2011
Misty
rated it:
My Overall Rating: 4/5
Originality: 5/5
Pace: 3/5
Action: 3.5/5
Cover Art: 3.5/5
Interest: 4/5
Characters: 5/5
Three Day Road is the best-selling interpretation of Native American life in the first World War. The stories of Xavier and Elijah are poignant and filled with trauma and sadness but intermingling story of Niska, a now elderly Native, adds a bit of motherly warmth to an otherwise cold war story.
First of all, this isn't the sort More...
Originality: 5/5
Pace: 3/5
Action: 3.5/5
Cover Art: 3.5/5
Interest: 4/5
Characters: 5/5
Three Day Road is the best-selling interpretation of Native American life in the first World War. The stories of Xavier and Elijah are poignant and filled with trauma and sadness but intermingling story of Niska, a now elderly Native, adds a bit of motherly warmth to an otherwise cold war story.
First of all, this isn't the sort More...
Jan 10, 2010
Dot
rated it:
I listened to this book on CD borrowed from the library and was glad I did so as the male and female narrators were able to give the cadence and pronunciations of the Cree language which greatly added to my enjoyment.
The three main characters are a Cree medicine woman who lives in the bush by herself, her nephew, and his friend who join the Canadian Army and go to France to fight in the First World War. The men are skilled hunters and therefore given a role as snipers going into no-man's More...
The three main characters are a Cree medicine woman who lives in the bush by herself, her nephew, and his friend who join the Canadian Army and go to France to fight in the First World War. The men are skilled hunters and therefore given a role as snipers going into no-man's More...
Oct 03, 2011
Lyn
rated it:
I had enjoyed "Through Black Spruce", Joseph Boyden's second book about Xavier Bird, but felt that "Three Day Road" was by far the more accomplished novel. Boyden's writing is spare, but brings all of the elements of the story very much to life. An unflinching rendition of life in the trenches of the First World War, it was not salacious in the description of the horrors faced by the fighting men. My reaction was that I could not believe that some of these soldiers survived
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Sep 18, 2011
Sandie
rated it:
Wow- this could have easily been a 5 star book except that it was too long. I found towards the end I was skipping over pages without missing a beat. A very interesting story of 2 young men, Xavier and Elijia, who are both Cree indians, and their struggle fighting in WW1. They were both raised in the bush in Ontario by Xavier's Aunt Niska after escaping a christian school while young. Their hunting abilties come in quite useful in the war and both are snipers with Elijia killing so many germans
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Aug 26, 2011
Mark
rated it:
The story opens in Northern Ontario, 1919 and World War I has just ended. Niska, a Oji-Cree medicine woman is traveling south to pick-up her nephew, the only family she has left. Several years earlier, her nephew, Xavier and his best friend Elijah, enlisted in the Canadian Army and soon found themselves deep in the trenches of western Europe. Due to their superb hunting skills, they find themselves in a sniper outfit.
This is a beautifully rendered novel and Boyden paints a lovely Canadian l More...
This is a beautifully rendered novel and Boyden paints a lovely Canadian l More...
Mar 06, 2007
ryan
rated it:
probably the best book I have read in a few years. about a pair of Cree-Ojibwa boys who fight for Canada in WWI, and become some of the best snipers on either side....also they get addicted to morphine. not really a war novel, more just about peoples lives. really really well done. was the finalist for the Governor General's Award in Canada and wonsome others. Probably the best book I will put on this website.
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