The Night Wanderer

This is an excellent book for young teens. I am a thirty year old college student who read this in a class on Native American Fiction and I loved it! It's a coming of age tale of romance and teen angst with the threat of a vampire who turns out to be a really great guy. Terrific read! Drew Hayden Taylor is also a hilarious person! Look him up!

This is the fifth book I bought of Drew's work and just WOW!!! extremely engaging and just so much fun reading. If you haven't read any of his books before you have to just buy one and you'll be hooked!P.S. Drew please put more of your book s on Kindle please!!! I want them all on my kindle!

This book was a great story, playing both on vampiric and native ideas. It's also a good look at life on the rez

Fabulous book by a phenomenal author. Great, thought-provoking but quick read. Great for middle school students to read and discuss in literature circle, with teacher, or with an elder!

The Night Wanderer by Drew Hayden Taylor is one of the more unique multicultural selections I have read. Taylor blends European vampire lore with modern Aboriginal culture to create a deliciously creepy tale.Many multicultural stories are often set in the past so that authors can educate readers about a culture. When set in the present, multicultural stories instead tend to tackle discrimination. It’s rare then for a multicultural author to explore genre such as Taylor does with The Night Wanderer. The result is an unusual tale, rightfully labelled as a native gothic romance. True to gothic form, The Night Wanderer contains supernatural or otherwise inexplicable events and a curse. The secretive stranger who lodges at the Hunter home, unknown to anyone in the First Nations community, has existed for over three hundred years. One minute Pierre can be speaking to a character, the next minute he has disappeared without a trace. What’s just as mysterious is that he never shows himself in the daylight and makes a great effort to avoid eating and drinking with others.True to romance form, The Night Wanderer also utilizes overwrought emotion and a female in distress. Tiffany Hunter’s mom has deserted the family, leaving Tiffany rebellious against her dad. Tiffany gets involved with a white boy named Tony, lets her grades slip, shuns her friends, and acts in other irrational ways. As Taylor begins to provide clues to the background of Pierre, my nervousness continued to build. Is he the one killing old-timers and young people? If so, will he kill Tiffany’s grandmother? When Tiffany runs away from home, and is followed by Pierre, what will happen when Pierre catches up to her? While vampire lore and romantic angst might seem like typical teen fare, Taylor blends them together to create a unique moralistic story that, thankfully, does not involve vampires and humans falling in love.Normally, young adult literature is written in first person and, as such, provides immediate and personal connection to the narrator. At times, I missed this feeling in The Night Wanderer. However, there’s also a valid reason for using such a style. A prime example of the third-person omniscient style in young adult literature occurs in The Body in the Woods, where April Henry successfully intensified the suspense in her crime mystery title by switching seamlessly between various viewpoints. Similarly, by allowing readers to see inside the heads of both the peculiar stranger and the Hunter family, Taylor creates tingles. We know that Pierre has killed even those whom he loved. What is his motive in returning to the village of his childhood? We also know that the Hunter family is just distressed enough to have let down their guard. Will this be a mistake?Although not set in the past, The Night Wanderer also does educate readers about modern Aboriginal culture by appropriately depicting a conflicted mix of old and new lifestyles. Tiffany’s family lives on Otter Creek Reserve, but she learns about Nazis and Bolsheviks at school. Her mom had been part of a traditional Native dance troupe but, at the same time, her dad drowns his sorrows over his divorce by watching television. Tiffany’s grandmother still speaks mostly Anishinabe but at the same time has a fondness for pickles. In addition, she relies on plant roots to cure illnesses while also shopping at Walmart for shoes. Even though Aboriginal families have been granted status cards for necessities, Tiffany uses it instead to impress her boyfriend with luxuries such as jewelry. Finally, native mythology is full of mysterious creatures such as wendigoes, but Tiffany and her friends find more relevance to the monsters they battle in video games.One of the members of the diversity committee to which I belong borrowed The Night Wanderer before me, but then returned it saying that she didn’t like to read scary stuff. While The Night Wanderer did cause goose bumps, I appreciated that my apprehension arose from bump-in-the-night chills rather than bloody and gory descriptions. If you enjoy old-fashioned horror, this coming-of-age novel is worth checking out.

In 1992, the Persephone Theatre in Saskatoon staged "A Contemporary Gothic Indian Vampire Story," a play commissioned by The Young People's Theatre of Toronto. Directed by Tibor Feheregyhazi, the story was written by Drew Hayden Taylor, who in 2007 adapted it as a YA novel called "The Night Wanderer: A Native Gothic Novel." Although I wasn't familiar with the original play, I came across the book while researching Canadian horror literature, and was instantly intrigued by the title. "The Night Wanderer" is a coming-of-age tale about a First Nations teenager, Tiffany Hunter, whose family boards a mysterious stranger from the East named Pierre L'Errant. Turns out the man is no longer quite human, and is returning to his homeland after centuries abroad. It's a very interesting premise that unfortunately didn't quite hold up to my expectations--although I suspect the target audience will get much more out of it.The tale takes place in and around a fictional reserve on Otter Lake, in the central lakes region of Ontario. Aside from the odd trip to Sudbury, Toronto, and Ottawa, Tiffany Hunter has spent her entire life within 45-minutes of her home. She goes to high school in the small community nearby, and has a white boyfriend named Tony--although both his parents, and her father, don't approve of the relationship. Much like with many of her generation, she's disconnected from the history of her own people, and is disillusioned about what the future may hold. Things take a supernatural turn upon the arrival of Pierre L'Errant, who was born in Europe but has come to Otter Lake in order to see his ancestral home and reconnect with his roots--or so he claims. He explains that his great-grandfather had been in the First World War, while his great-grandmother was part of a traditional Native dance troupe that had been touring Europe at the time. They met overseas, and settled there. Tiffany and her family buy the story, even though they're quite amazed by the fact that Pierre's features are more strikingly Native than their own--not diluted through generations. He simply chalks it up to strong genes. The family also overlooks his peculiar diet (he's not able to eat any regular food), and his "skin condition" means that he has to avoid sunlight. Therefore, he spends the moonlit hours not eating any food, and wandering around the surrounding landscape. Tiffany finds Pierre to be quite odd, but as her family notes, "he is European after all."That's one of the issues I have with the story: Pierre is just too odd to not raise more red flags. But I digress. Without giving away more of the plot, I will add that there are some good elements to this folk tale, especially regarding Pierre and his attempts to reconnect Tiffany with her ancestors (and the world around her). What disappointed me was that there was not really much of any First Nations lore at all; based on the title, I thought Pierre may have been a 'wendigo', or at least he'd cross paths with more traditional beasts during his nighttime excursions (this is a fantasy tale, after all). But he's simply a traditional vampire of European folklore--which is not a spoiler, really, since this is pretty much clear from the outset.What really stands out is Pierre's story, and the glimpses of his historical journey from Canada to Europe, where he was eventually turned into a vampire. This would make for a very interesting prequel story, so perhaps one day this character will live on in his own tale.The book was also recently adapted as  The Night Wanderer: A Graphic Novel , from Annick Press.

I enjoyed reading The Night Wanderer. This is the first graphic novel that I read, and the experience was really good. I liked the vampire story that was different in its own way from the other vampire tales in the market. The inclusion of the natives, Anishinaabe or Ojibwa, their early culture, history, arrival of the whites to their land, folklores, and legends made the storyline unique. The life of a troubled teenager with family problems and boyfriend troubles, portrayed through Tiffany touched the right chords too. Mr.Pierre was an interesting character, mysterious and seemingly evil at first, but kind at heart who wanted to live as humanly as possible. The story of his life as a human, migration to foreign land, and turning to a monster was one of my favorite parts.I am looking forward to reading more graphic novels in future.

The Night Wanderer was a fun, easy read. I bought this book after reading and enjoying Motorcycles and Sweetgrass, although this one was obviously a bit juvenile seeing as it is a young adult book, it would definitely be a good choice for teenagers. There are some typos as other reviews pointed out, but I only spotted 2 or 3 and this did not bother me too much. Overall, I think Drew Hayden Taylor does a great job in writing a story about an Aboriginal Vampire, something you don't read about everyday.

I did not realize it a vampire kind of book as I hate vampire stories. So my husband read it and said it was really good and it is not what you think. Sooo I will read it. Like the cover!

I enjoyed the story and so I gave it to my own teenage daughter to read. It didn't take very long to finish the book.

Good book