SOURCE: Murray, Don. “Wandering Ermineskins: Kinsella's Prairie Indians Are Now Peregrine Indians.” Essays on Canadian Writing (spring 1989): 132-36.

In the following review, Murray evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the short stories in The Fencepost Chronicles.

The Fencepost Chronicles is the fifth of Kinsella's Indian books (Dance Me Outside, 1977; Scars, 1978; Born Indian, 1981; The Moccasin Telegraph, 1983) and the first in which the author keeps his long-standing promise to take Silas Ermineskin (the Cree storyteller), Frank Fencepost, and their friends far from the Hobbema Reserve (though Silas and Frank once visited Las Vegas). Of the thirteen stories in this new collection, eight are set in Alberta; and of these, only one is set in the atypical context of a French-Canadian town in the province—Silas's “St. Edouard [which] is way up in north-east Alberta, a place most of us never been before” (3). The Fencepost Chronicles are loosely named because they're...