Novel about remote Aboriginal community wins B.C. fiction prize

A tragic but inspiring story about a remote First Nations reserve in British Columbia has won the Ethel Wilson prize, B.C.'s top prize for fiction.
The Heaviness of Things That Float, by Jennifer Manuel, published by Douglas & McIntyre, is the story of Bernadette, a nurse who worked in a remote indigenous community for 40 years. She's on the verge of retirement when Chase Charlie, a young man she is close to, disappears. Here's a review of the book I wrote for the Vancouver Sun.
Manuel, although not an indigenous person herself, has worked in remote areas of B.C. with Aboriginal people for many years.
At its heart, the novel is about privilege, as expressed in this quote from Manuel. “It hasn’t occurred to (Bernadette) that she may still hold assumptions rooted in her own dominant culture, and when you are in a position of privilege, the worst thing you can do assume. It’s the novel’s central message: try to know the other, but never assume to know the other.”
The fiction prize was handed out Saturday night in Vancouver, along with seven others awarded at the 33rd annual BC Book Prizes gala.
The recently deceased Aboriginal author Richard Wagamese won the Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice award for his book Embers: One Ojibway’s Meditations (Douglas and McIntyre). That prize is given to the best book in terms of public appeal, initiative, design, production, and content. Embers is a book of meditations that Wagamese created and used in his own life as an author of many books, including Indian Horse, Medicine Walk and Keeper 'N' Me.
Author and artist Douglas Coupland, who coined the term Generation X with his book of the same name, won the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence. That award comes with a $5,000 prize, while the other winners each receive $2,000.

The other winners were:

• Neil J. Sterritt, Mapping My Way Home: A Gitxsan History (Creekstone Press), which won the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize for the author(s) of the book that contributes most to the enjoyment and understanding of British Columbia;

• Deborah Campbell, A Disappearance in Damascus: A Story of Friendship and Survival in the Shadow of War
(Knopf Canada), which won the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize for the best original non-fiction literary work:;

• Adèle Barclay, If I Were in a Cage I’d Reach Out for You (Nightwood Editions), which won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry prize;

• Monique Gray Smith, illustrated by Julie Flett, My Heart Fills With Happiness (Orca Book Publishers), which won the Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize;

and

• Iain Lawrence, The Skeleton Tree (Tundra Books), which won the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize awarded to the best non-illustrated book written for children.

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