Seeking the Center

Publisher: Cuidono Press

Agnes Demers is a young Métis woman who grew up playing hockey, skating with the neighborhood kids on the frozen ponds of her hometown, St. Cyp, through the long Saskatchewan winters. For Agnes, hockey is the measure of all things - the ultimate test of passion and power, spirit and skill. But hockey has betrayed her, left her watching from the bleachers - all because she had the miserable luck to be born female. When Agnes moves to Wapahaska to work at the Indian Jewel Box with her friend Jo, she intends to ignore the town's minor-league hockey team, the Prairie Wolves, not to mention her childhood teammate Owen MacKenzie, the Wolves' star center. In fact, she intends to ignore the whole smug, self-congratulatory scene, but it isn't long before she becomes entangled again with the game she loves, with Owen, and with the team's new enforcer, Claude Doucette, an older player who shares her Native heritage and aspires to live by its warrior creed. Locked in a dizzying three-way tilt, Agnes must seek the center: the balance to stay on her skates, the opening to make a play, and the vision to reclaim her game.

Trained as a musician, Leslie Spitz-Edson became interested in Métis music and culture while working at Folkways Recordings. Hockey is a more recent obsession, but she is (all too belatedly) learning to play the most beautiful game on the planet.