Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Traplines | 1996 | Eden Robinson | Buy |
Traplines (1996) was Eden Robinson’s first book and remains one of the most praised Canadian short story collections of the 1990s. The stories deal with teenagers and young adults navigating violent or neglectful environments, told in Robinson’s flat, direct prose that refuses to soften what her characters experience.
The collection won the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize and signaled the arrival of a writer whose work would consistently challenge comfortable assumptions about Canadian Indigenous life. Many of the themes Robinson explores in Traplines, including family dysfunction, substance abuse, and the tension between traditional culture and modern survival, reappear throughout her later novels.