The Sound of Ice Cracking is loosely based on time the author spent as a teacher on a First Nations reserve in Northern Ontario. The two central characters in the story are Jade Medicine, turning eighteen and in her last year of high school ; and Dani Eberhardt, a first-year teacher at the new Anishinabe school.
BOOK ONE is entitled, Place.
Jade is in her last year of high school and will soon turn eighteen. She is a resident of Turtle Point First Nations Reserve in Northern Ontario and descended from a hereditary line of medicine women and men. Jade is a brilliant student, driven to complete high school, attend university, and become a medical doctor. Dani is twenty-one and from rural Southern Ontario. She is young for a first-year teacher, fast-tracking through school to make a getaway from small-town closed-mindedness. Dani is idealistic and determined to make an impact in her grade one classroom.
Jade and Dani meet for the first time at the annual Pow Wow, a week before the highly anticipated opening of the new school. An out-and-proud lesbian, Dani arrives in Turtle Point brimming with optimism but meets with hostility and mistrust as an “outsider”. Jade keeps her attraction to women secret, living an independent but precarious life on the reserve. Book One, Place, tracks Dani’s efforts to bring success to her students and find her place in Turtle Point, while Jade attempts to ace her studies in the face of personal and family issues.
Book Cover Design: Renee Robinson (she/her)
Photography: Maz Lovekin (they/them)
Genealogy Research: Erin Robinson (she/her)
Up Next
BOOK TWO, called Time, accounts the time and effort that Dani invests in her new life in Turtle Point, where she begins to make breakthroughs with the Anishinabe residents of Turtle Point, with friendships and alliances that take root. Dani accepts that she must come to terms with the love that she feels for Jade. In Time, Jade continues to navigate a fractured relationship with her father and deal with a toxic, long-standing friendship. She stumbles through an emotional minefield with Dani while the singular focus on her studies never lets up amidst the chaos of reserve life.
The Final
BOOK THREE, called Esse, is a culmination of the time that Dani has spent in Turtle Point, the relationships that she has cultivated, the devastation that she has experienced, and the tragedies that she has witnessed. The metaphysical world of Indigenous spirituality factors greatly in Dani’s life during Esse, while her view of humanity becomes skewed, and her eternal optimism wanes. In Esse, Jade repairs the emotional black hole that threatens to engulf her, having allowed trust and vulnerability to enter her heart. Moonstone and Ruby make inroads along their spiritual healing journeys that strengthen the ties between the Medicine Family. Dani and Jade have begun to learn the tenets of Esse by the end of Book Three in, The Sound of Ice Cracking.