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A Glacier's Guide to Dying
- Author
- Michelle Porter
- Narrator
- various
- Publisher
- Hachette Audio
- Publish Date
- 3 November 2026
- Run Time
- 7 hours
- Format
- Audiobook
What to expect
A young Métis man searching for his missing father finds himself arguing with a dying glacier in this compelling and hopeful novel about the burdens and blessings of inheritance, from the award-winning author of A Grandmother Begins the Story.
Robbie has spent most of life wondering about his real father, Mike, who long since left their family due to his struggles with visions and mistrust of the modern world. Robbie can't forget how much he felt connected to him from his few visits, and not just because they share two differently colored eyes. But now, as he rescues his mother from encroaching wildfires, he's determined to also find his father. Robbie takes off to find answers, and when his uncle confesses that he last dropped Mike off at a glacier, he and his uncle head climb up the mountain of ice to see if Mike might still be there, and whether he's still alive.
On the slopes of a huge glacier, Robbie, starts hearing the ancient voice of the glacier itself giving him guidance. Has he accessed a deep connection to the land, or is he succumbing to the same illness that had wreaked havoc on his father's life?
Michelle Porter brings her profoundly moving sensibility and disarmingly funny voice to a powerful contemporary story of identity and belonging, loss and healing, within families and with the immortal land itself.
Critics Review
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“As layered as the ice of a glacier, this is a story that will have you coming back again and again to truly understand its depth and brilliance. Remarkable storytelling!”—Amanda Peters, author of The Berry Pickers
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“Michelle Porter wonderfully weaves together Métis epistemologies, SMS and digital narration, as well as beautiful lamentations of glacial animacy. And her protagonist, Robbie, is wickedly contemporary: deeply introverted, philosophical, and feral to the settler masculinities prescribed to him. He holds within him a tornado, the Albertan wildfires, mountainous giants, fatherly longing, and the Athabascan glacier, Omega. This is not simply magic realism, anthropomorphism, a bildungsroman, or Métis oral storytelling. It is each of those and more. Sovereign to its storytelling histories. For fans of Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God or Eden Robinson’s Trickster trilogy—A Glacier’s Guide to Dying is a must read.”—Joshua Whitehead, author of Johnny Appleseed
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“Michelle Porter is a gem of a writer. Giving voice to our natural kin, A Glacier's Guide to Dying is a poignant novel, light in its delivery but full of weight in its afterglow. I loved this one.”
—katherena vermette, author of real ones
User Reviews
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Details
- Author
- Michelle Porter
- Narrator
- various
- Duration
- 7 hours
- Release Date
- 3 November 2026
- ISBN
- 9781668660515
- Format
- Audiobook
- Publisher
- Hachette Audio
- Genre
- Fiction: general and literary
Synopsis
A young Métis man searching for his missing father finds himself arguing with a dying glacier in this compelling and hopeful novel about the burdens and blessings of inheritance, from the award-winning author of A Grandmother Begins the Story. Robbie has spent most of life wondering about his real father, Mike, who long since left their family due to his struggles with visions and mistrust of the modern world. Robbie can't forget how much he felt connected to him from his few visits, and not just because they share two differently colored eyes. But now, as he rescues his mother from encroaching wildfires, he's determined to also find his father. Robbie takes off to find answers, and when his uncle confesses that he last dropped Mike off at a glacier, he and his uncle head climb up the mountain of ice to see if Mike might still be there, and whether he's still alive. On the slopes of a huge glacier, Robbie, starts hearing the ancient voice of the glacier itself giving him guidance. Has he accessed a deep connection to the land, or is he succumbing to the same illness that had wreaked havoc on his father's life? Michelle Porter brings her profoundly moving sensibility and disarmingly funny voice to a powerful contemporary story of identity and belonging, loss and healing, within families and with the immortal land itself.
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