Winner of the 2020 PMC Indigenous Literature Award

When Ralph Thomas comes across graffiti of a horse in an alleyway in the early hours of the morning, he is stopped in his tracks. He recognizes this horse. A half-asleep Indigenous homeless man sees Ralph’s reaction to the horse and calls out to him. Over the course of a morning’s worth of hot coffee on a bitterly cold day, Ralph and the homeless man talk and Ralph remembers a troubling moment from his childhood when an odd little girl, Danielle, drew the most beautiful and intriguing horse on his mother’s Everything Wall, winning the competition set up for children on the Otter Lake Reserve.

Ralph has lived with many questions that arose from his eleventh winter. What did the horse mean — to him, his sister, his best friend, and, most importantly, the girl who drew it? These questions have never left him.

Chasing Painted Horses has a magical, fablelike quality that will enchant readers, and haunt them, for years to come.

Ojibway writer Drew Hayden Taylor is from the Curve Lake Reserve in Ontario. Hailed by the Montreal Gazette as one of Canada’s leading Native dramatists, he writes for the screen as well as the stage and contributes regularly to North American Native periodicals and national NEWSpapers. His plays have garnered many prestigious awards, and his beguiling and perceptive storytelling style has enthralled audiences in Canada, the United States and Germany. His 1998 play Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth has been anthologized in Seventh Generation: An Anthology of Native American Plays, published by the Theatre Communications Group. Although based in Toronto, Taylor has travelled extensively throughout North America, honouring requests to read from his work and to attend arts festivals, workshops and productions of his plays. He was also invited to Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute in California, where he taught a series of seminars on the depiction of Native characters in fiction, drama and film. One of his most established bodies of work includes what he calls the Blues Quartet, an ongoing, outrageous and often farcical examination of Native and non-Native stereotypes.

Drew Hayden Taylor's profile page

• Nominated, One Book One Aurora
• Winner, PMC Indigenous Literature Award
• Nominated, Forest of Reading - Evergreen Awards

"Readers will appreciate the touching depiction of family and friendship dynamics in childhood, and the novel's suffusion with empathy makes it a worthwhile read."

Quill & Quire

“Chasing Painted Horses by Drew Hayden Taylor (Curve Lake Anishinaabe) is an enchanting novel about how finding some equestrienne graffiti in an alley compels police officer Ralph Thomas to wonder about an extraordinary girl named Danielle. In their youth, Danielle drew a horse on the creative space known as ‘The Everything Wall,’ creating a lasting image the officer must now contend with. Flashing between Thomas’ interactions with a gifted, homeless Cree named Harry and his recollections of Danielle and others, Taylor’s genius for writing didactic comedies are on full display. Taylor’s faithful readers will recognize that this novel expands on stories he explored earlier in his career, revisiting the characters and creative spaces that tug on the reins around one’s heart.”

Tribal College Journal of American Indian Higher Education

"Taylor doesn’t shy away from challenging the reader, but he offers us beacons of light in the most unexpected places."

I've Read This

"Drew has given us a grand mystery, a riddle, a gift. Every page was turned with growing wonder. I will be thinking about this novel for years to come ... The elegance he's created here with Danielle's precious gift will shadow us for years."

Richard Van Camp, author of <i>Moccasin Square Gardens</i>

"It's a haunting novel, with flashes of wry humour."

The Globe and Mail