Kiss of the Fur Queen is a novel by Tomson Highway

Tomson Highway

Tomson Highway, CM is a celebrated Canadian and Cree playwright, novelist, and children's author. He is the author of the plays The Rez Sisters and Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, both of which won him the Dora Mavor Moore Award and the Floyd S...

. It was first published by Doubleday Canada

Doubleday Canada

Doubleday Canada is an imprint of the publishing company Random House of Canada. The company was previously known as Forboys, and was incorporated in 1936 and since 1945, has been known as Doubleday Canada Limited. Since 1986 Doubleday Canada Limited has been owned by Bertelsmann AG.See...

 in September 1998.

The novel's main characters are Champion and Ooneemeetoo Okimasis, two young Cree

Cree

The Cree are one of the largest groups of First Nations / Native Americans in North America, with 200,000 members living in Canada. In Canada, the major proportion of Cree live north and west of Lake Superior, in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and the Northwest Territories, although...

 brothers from northern Manitoba

Manitoba

Manitoba is a Canadian prairie province with an area of . The province has over 110,000 lakes and has a largely continental climate because of its flat topography. Agriculture, mostly concentrated in the fertile southern and western parts of the province, is vital to the province's economy; other...

 who are taken from their family and sent to a residential school. Their language is forbidden, their names are changed to Jeremiah and Gabriel, and the boys are sexually abused by priests. However, a wily trickster

Trickster

In mythology, and in the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a god, goddess, spirit, man, woman, or anthropomorphic animal who plays tricks or otherwise disobeys normal rules and conventional behavior. It is suggested by Hansen that the term "Trickster" was probably first used in this...

 figure, the Fur Queen, watches over the boys as they fulfill their destiny to become artists.

The novel, a fictionalized account of the real-life childhood of Highway and his brother René

René Highway

René Highway was a Canadian dancer and actor of Cree descent from Brochet, Manitoba. He was the brother of playwright Tomson Highway, with whom he frequently collaborated during their time at Native Earth Performing Arts in Toronto, and the partner of actor and singer Micah Barnes.Highway studied...

, was a nominee for the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award and the Books in Canada First Novel Award

Books in Canada First Novel Award

The Amazon.ca First Novel Award, formerly the Books in Canada First Novel Award, is a literary award given annually to the best first novel in English published the previous year by a citizen or resident of Canada. It has been awarded since 1976....

 in 1998.

Franco-Ontarian poet and academic Robert Dickson

Robert Dickson (writer)

Robert Dickson was a Canadian poet, translator and academic.Dickson formerly worked as a professor for le Département d'études françaises et de traduction at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario...

 translated the novel into French, and it is published with Prise de parole

Prise de parole

Prise de parole is a Canadian book publishing company.Located in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, the company publishes Franco-Ontarian literature...