I have read this manuscript and it is great. I like the way Alice Azure frames her life experiences and her family, how she looks to the Mi’kmaq and Acadian collaborations in the past and how her life is entwined in this. Her reconnection to the Métis of Nova Scotia is well written. I was touched by her story.
Along Came a Spider is an account of a search for self-knowledge that evolves into a search for community. Her guide, Grandmother Spider, has the first word in every chapter, goading Alice to write her story. Her journey in time and place is spiritual as much geographic, and her spirituality spans Native American tradition to C.S. Lewis. The book is meticulous and learned but never pretentious.
President, St. Louis Poetry Center
This is a vital contribution to contemporary Native American literature. Already highly regarded for her poetry, Alice Azure proves to be a captivating storyteller, weaving together personal narrative, her own voracious reading and research, and vivid re-imaginings of the people—and spirits–who led her back to her Mi’kmaq heritage.
Azure carries the reader right along on her Grandmother Spider’s back, during this journey to find her Native place within the cloaked web of Canadian genealogy and indigenous heritage. The spider, who serves as her reader’s guide, adds the most brilliant filaments to this truthful tale of love, loss, mistakes, and miracles, leading to wholeness and understanding.
—Melissa Tantaquidgeon Zobel, Mohegan Medicine Woman, author of the novels, Fire Hollow and Oracles