Michelle Porter's Scratching River is both a reckoning and an elegy; a scathing, powerful roar against social injustice, the scars of trauma, climate crisis, environmental damage and, at the very same time, a love song to the power of family, Métis history, rivers, Bison, burdock, and the Métis storyteller and musician, Louis Goulet, who is her great-great-grandfather's brother. Porter artfully braids together a portrait of her brother, Brendan Porter, who was horrifically brutalized in an institution for mentally disabled adults, with a rich understanding of the lives and habits of rivers, grassland, bison, and the threatened ecosystems of the prairies -- to profound effect. Here also are wisdom and tenderness, stories full of dancing, hunting, travelling by ox-drawn cart, or Greyhound bus, and sleeping under the stars. Porter roves gracefully through the past, present, and future and proves herself a consummate writer for our times. Scratching River is a rare gift. --Lisa Moore , author of Something for Everyone.