The Break is a heart-breaking debut novel about the trauma of missing and murdered women. The story is set in Winnipeg’s North End and begins with Stella, a young Métis mother, witnessing a rape from her baby’s bedroom window. It’s winter, she is shaken, she has two young kids asleep (then crying), and she does call the police but is otherwise too frozen to take action.
The police take their time to respond and by the time they do, Stella feels ignored and dismissed by them and her white husband, who’d prefer to believe it was gang related and not their business. That said, one of the policemen, Officer Scott, is a Métis. He works to understand what is happening with this crime but never truly learns the full story.
Told through a series of shifting narratives, Vermette introduces the reader to Stella’s Kukum (grandmother) and her aunties (Lou, a social worker, and Cheryl, an artist). We are also introduced to Phoenix, a teenager who has slipped away from a young detention centre, and her uncle, a local drug dealer/gang member, both of whom are known to Lou and Cheryl’s children. Then through a series of connections we come to understand the true scope of this tragedy, the number of women who’ve died, and the intergenerational grief that continues to haunt this family.
This is a sad and shocking book to read but it also offers insights into the non-fiction stories about missing and murdered Indigenous women, the landfill search for the remains of First Nations women in Winnipeg, and “Every Child Matters.”
Discover more of Katherena Vermette’s novels on her website.