Who is Will Sawnet? After his father's death, a young man learns that his mother was Native, and that he was adopted. Shocked and disoriented by the sudden discovery that his past was a lie, Will quits his newspaper job and takes to the road in desperate search of his real mother. This is a satisfying, compelling novel filled with humour, poignancy, tragedy, and caring detail, as Will drives north to the Red Clay Reserve, teetering between selves: is he Will Sawnet, the name his white parents always called him, or Billy Childforever, the ironic name his Cree girlfriend, Agnes, has given him? In Childforever, Cree-Scottish writer Ian McCulloch has created a powerful, urgent exploration of a crisis in identity and its resolution.

Ian McCulloch (April 18, 1957 – September 23, 2019) was

born in Comox, B.C. and raised in Northern Ontario. He was the

author of three books of poetry: The Moon of Hunger (Penumbra,

1982), The Efficiency of Killers (Penumbra, 1988) and Parables

and Rain (Penumbra, 1993), and three chapbooks, Balsam To

Ease All Pains (Alburnum Press, 1998), A Box of Light (above/

ground press, 2019), and Certain Humans (above/ ground press,

2020). He was also the author of the novel Childforever(Mercury,

1996). A founding member of Northern Ontario’s longest-running

international reading series, “The Conspiracy of 3,” he read twice

at Toronto’s prestigious Harbourfront series. Two of his poems

were included in the anthology Tamaracks: Canadian Poetry for

the 21st Century (LUMMOX Press, 2018). His writing was deeply

influenced by family and his Indigenous heritage. Ian was the father

of three and married to poet and professor, Laurie Kruk.

Ian McCulloch's profile page