The Lesser Blessed - Softcover

In this powerful and very funny debut novel, author Richard Van Camp gives us one of the most original teenage characters in Canadian fiction... "The Lesser Blessed" is an eye-opening depiction of what it is to be a young Dogrib man in the age of AIDS, disillusionment with Catholicism, and a growing world consciousness. This 20th anniversary edition of a true Canadian literary classic from Douglas & McIntyre is unreservedly recommended."--Midwest Book Review

"Its halcyon moments are cigarette scorched, and it has teeth--lots of them. The Lesser Blessed stood apart in 1996, and there has yet to be anything like it."--Booklist

The 20th-anniversary edition of Richard Van Camp’s best-selling coming-of-age story, with a new introduction and story by the author

Larry is a Dogrib Indian growing up in the small northern town of Fort Simmer. His tongue, his hallucinations and his fantasies are hotter than the center of the sun. At sixteen, he loves Iron Maiden, the North and Juliet Hope, the high school tramp.”

In this powerful and very funny first novel, Richard Van Camp gives us one of the most original teenage characters in Canadian fiction. Skinny as spaghetti, nervy and self-deprecating, Larry is an appealing mixture of bravado and vulnerability. His past holds many terrors: an abusive father, blackouts from sniffing gasoline, an accident that killed several of his cousins, and he’s now being hunted and haunted by a pack of blue monkeys. But through his new friendship with Johnny, a Metis who just moved to town, he’s now ready to face his memories and his future.

The Lesser Blessed is an eye-opening depiction of what it is to be a young Dogrib man in the age of AIDS, disillusionment with Catholicism, and a growing world consciousness.