The Silence: A Novel

Leah Redsky is a Salteaux/Salish woman living in Vancouver who struggles with identity and the difficult intercultural dynamics of having a non-Indgenous boyfriend and working for the government. Often conflicted, at odds with her past and current life, things unravel and she suffers a breakdown – the unexpected life twist that is the key to coming to terms with her past. Through a diary, she discovers something terrible happened, yet what that is is unclear until she begins to have dream encounters with Tlingit/Tagish spirits who she knew in the north when she lived a traditional life on the land. It takes over a year, and finally a visit to the north for the elders’ memorial potlatch, before Leah finds the strength to accept and integrate past and present so she may move into the future… She finds her power as an Indigenous woman, heals her spiritual and psychological wounds through the resolution of previous traumas, and reconciles her ability to communicate with those in the next world as she comes to understand she has been chosen to be a Medicine Woman/Elder/Cultural Leader.

Karen Lee White is a Northern Salish, Tuscarora, Chippewa and Scots writer from Vancouver Island, B.C. She was adopted into the Daklaweidi clan of the Interior Tlingit Tagish people on whose land the story unfolds. In 2017 Karen was awarded an Indigenous Art Award for Writing by the Hnatyshyn Foundation. Her work has appeared in Exile’s That Dammed Beaver: Canadian Humour; Laughs and Gaffs anthology; the collection of Indigenous writers Impact, Colonialism in Canada, and literary journals. She has been commissioned as a playwright by theatres in Vancouver and Victoria, and was commissioned by the Banff Centre to produce a story for the “Fables of the 21st Century” special edition, released in 2018.