• Age: 13 to 17
• Grade: 7

After living away for years, Sandy Lafonde returns to her childhood home at the Watishka First Nation reserve. Little has changed since she left -- a local gang menaces the area, the community is splintered and the Cree youth are left restless and frustrated. Sandy realizes that she needs to do something to help, so she proposes to start a junior hockey team. Drawing on her own past, Sandy steps in as coach and tries to reign in the star player, hot-headed Sheldon Lambert, a 15-year-old hockey prodigy who just can't seem to stay out of trouble. The team struggles to stay together in the face of crippling odds and the ever-present gang lurking in the background. And Sheldon faces a decision that could affect the fate of the team, and his own life.

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Watishka Warriors

In this novel, Sandy Lafonde returns to the Watishka Lake First Nations Reserve in northern Alberta to visit her Aunty Anne. She discovers a reserve devastated by yet another death of a young person who chose suicide over joining the Posse, a gang that has been terrorizing the community. Sandy starts a hockey team to give the youth something to do. Few of the members know how to skate and the coach is a hockey star with problems of his own. Gradually the team comes together with the financial help of Sandy’s ex-NHLer boyfriend and her hockey expertise. A pair of games with a team from Peace River gives them a focus and after an expected loss in the first game, the players come together when they host the second game in their outdoor facility. This story of despair and anger promises a happy ending for the main protagonists in the community.