Summary Of Joseph Boyden's Three Day Road

Three Day Road is a historical novel by Joseph Boyden told through circular narrative about the lives of Niska and Xavier, an indigenous aunt and nephew. This book highlights the effects of Residential schools, colonialism’s impact on the indigenous way of life, the experience of Indigenous soldiers, and overall reflects the idea of indigenous perseverance in the face of stolen autonomy. One of Boyden’s aims in writing the this novel was to highlight the great contributions of First Nations soldiers in to the war efforts of the early 20th century and onwards. Joseph Boyden chose to invent new characters for this part of the novel as to not limit the story by being bound to the accuracies of biographic fiction, while still including real historical figures, like Francis Pegahmagabow. Boyden

While Boyden’s representation of historical content is important, the way Boyden examines history through his use of style along with this content that sharpens the text’s criticism of the way history has impacted the ever-changing present. Three Day Road allows for the examination of how history acts in a domino effect rather than just a series of independent occurrences. Finally, Three Day Road creates an argument against the ways indigenous peoples have been isolated, both from their own culture and from participating within a larger Canadian context.

Three Day Road is written as a frame text told through circular narrative. The two stories told within the overall narrative allow the reader to understand how Niska and Xavier have ended up on this journey home together. Just as it is a plot device, it is also a device to further examine the way that trauma can occur over a multi-generational span. Gordon postulates that the desire to explain the presence of emotional pain and healing over a multi-generational span “informs the novel’s dialectical application of differing time structures, as Three Day Road confirms the opposition of historical