A Dirty Deed by Ted Stenhouse

“A Dirty Deed” is a historical fiction book set in the ‘50’s in a very racist rural prairie town. It shows the struggle of a native kid (Arthur), who is friends with a white kid (Will.) The book starts out explaining Will and Arthur’s relationship , and how they are different from each other. It also tells of the horrible residential school that Arthur goes to.

Early on in the book, Will and Arthur are walking through a hay field, when they see some people hunting. They do a little more inspection, when they find out that it’s a young native kid that they’re hunting down! Arthur and Will follow the adults and watch the kid nicknamed “Catface” get beaten by the adults. Will and Arthur eventually find out why they are beating him. They find that aside from just plain stupidity, the adults are trying to get Catface to cough up some important papers that they seem to want very much which Catface obviously doesn’t have. They also find out that the adults are old man Howe who is a very nasty, rich and powerful person that lives in town.

The two friends find the papers buried under some rocks and take them back to town. Under closer inspection, they find out that they are property deeds of some sort and are worth a lot of money to Howe. With Arthur and Will knowing Howe, they know that he will stop at nothing to get those papers.

I am about halfway done this book, and it is pretty boring. The reasons that it is boring are that it is pretty slow paced. The author explains too much about the tiny things that the boys do together. I hope this book will get better, because it seems like a pretty good plot so far.

A good thing about this book is that it explains how horribly racist some people were back in that time. The government’s dealing with aboriginal people in that time period was definitely segregation. I wouldn’t recommend this book to you.