The Lesser Blessed

It’s been more than 20 years since Richard Van Camp’s The Lesser Blessed made its influential debut on the Canadian literary scene. The book found a wildly receptive audience and, in 2012, was adapted to film by director Anita Doron. This book pushes the boundaries of what has previously been considered young adult fiction and Indigenous literature, forging a new genre all its own.

The novel is a high school coming-of-age story set deep in the Canadian north. Although the book is based on Van Camp’s hometown of Fort Smith in the Northwest Territories, he cleverly invented the fictional town of Fort Simmer so as to avoid the complications that come along with writing about a small, close-knit community. Through writing this book, Van Camp was seeking not just to profit off the issues of alcoholism and violence that plagued his community growing up, but as a way of healing from the hardship and moving forward.

The Lesser Blessed by Richard Van Camp tells the story of Larry Sole, a Dogrib teenager who lives in the small northern town of Fort Simmer. After a violent accident that resulted in Larry losing most of his memory, he finds solace in hearing and collecting stories. Existing on the periphery of high school life, Larry has no interest in sports or alcohol. This separates him from the rest of his schoolmates, and he spends most of his time alone indulging in his love for heavy metal music, especially Iron Maiden, and fantasizing about his high school crush, Juliet Hope.



Things shift gears for Larry when good-looking Métis rebel Johnny Beck arrives in town, opening his eyes to a whole new world. Larry is happy to find a friend in Johnny, but it soon becomes apparent that this new friendship is leading him down a dark path, one laced with sex, drugs and violence, and dredging up memories of his past that he’s desperately tried to leave behind.

Larry is a second generation residential school system survivor. While he did not attend the school himself, he still suffers from inter-generational trauma as a result of it. The abuse that occurred through the residential schools did not stop there, as many of the children who came out of the system became violent and abusive themselves, thus carrying on that legacy.

Larry’s father is a prime example of a residential school survivor struggling to come to terms with his own demons. Although he has passed away, his presence and his influence in Larry’s life cast a shadow over the entire narrative of the book. While Van Camp chooses not to focus on the residential school system as a main theme in the book, he still strives to make it clear that this is not your average small town. For example, Larry’s mom harps on him to go shoot them a moose for the winter. Although the narrative is raw and real, there are many such elements of comedy interspersed throughout.



These details serve to remind the reader that this is a very specific community with a distinct history and culture. The reminders can be comical, but there is also a darkness that dwells beneath the surface. Larry reminisces about a summer from his youth, going down to the beach to play in the sand, and how he started sniffing gas with his friends. He says he wasn’t very interested in it at first, but that it helped him to deal with the trauma brought upon his family by his father.

This becomes a common theme throughout the novel, as most of the young people in the community refer to their living situation as a ‘war zone’ and make use of drugs and alcohol as a way to cope with traumas past and present. Before Johnny enters the scene, Larry has no interest in these activities.

The narrative focuses on the importance of storytelling for preserving culture and tradition from generation to generation. Although Larry has problems with his memory after living through a violent accident, he is described as a gifted storyteller, a trait that is highly valued in his community.



The novel focuses heavily on the relationships between the male characters, specifically between Larry and Johnny, as well as Larry’s relationship with his mother’s boyfriend, Jed. Even when Johnny becomes involved with Larry’s love interest, Juliet, he still stands by his friends side, though he continues to secretly pine for her. Through his friendship with Johnny, Larry is able to open up about the physical and sexual abuse he experienced at the hands of his father, the blackouts he experienced while sniffing gasoline with his friends, and the violent accident that killed several of his cousins. By revisiting the past, Larry is able to heal from it and move on, creating for himself a brighter and more hopeful future.