A SERVICE95 BOOKCLUB HYPE READ FOR OCTOBER + HARPERS BAZAAR BEST BOOK OF AUTUMN 2025 'A
powerful beautiful wrenching masterpiece ... both a memoir and something that reaches far
beyond the personal' ' REBECCA SOLNIT author of HOPE IN THE DARK 'The book I've been
waiting my whole life to read' TOMMY ORANGE author of the Booker longlisted WANDERING STARS
'A story that must be told' KATHLEEN DUVAL Pulitzer Prize-winning author of NATIVE NATIONS
- "In my people's language we greet each other each morning by saying "Tsecwínucw-k: 'You
survived the night"' One dark night a new-born is discovered dumped inside a waste
incinerator. The boy rescued from death grows into a man who will in turn abandon his own
children including his first-born son Julian Brave NoiseCat. Behind this father-son story
lies an even darker history of abuse colonialism and vicious attempts to erase North America's
First Peoples from their land. Told in the style of a 'Coyote Story' a legend of the trickster
forefather of NoiseCat's people We Survived the Night brings a vanishing artform back to life
in this dazzling account of contemporary Indigenous North America. Braiding on-the-ground
reportage together with intimate experience history with mythology NoiseCat grapples with
trauma that cascades across generations to uncover truths about himself his family and his
people - how they survived and how through vital political environmental and cultural
movements they are coming back. An inventive illuminating and moving narrative from one of
the most compelling artists at work today We Survived the Night is both reconciliation and
celebration of Indigenous pain hope and resurgence - and their power to shape a collective
future. Here is an unforgettable journey of restoration through father-son ties and historic
reckoning of Indigenous people announcing a major new literary talent.
