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Eliza Sunshine
  • Published: 8 September 2026
  • ISBN: 9781039011434
  • Imprint: Random House Canada
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $39.99

Eliza Sunshine

Formats & editions
Paperback
8 Sept 2026
EBook
18 Aug 2026
Audiobook
18 Aug 2026
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FINALIST FOR THE 2026 GILLER PRIZE

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

From the award-winning and bestselling author of Five Little Indians comes a powerful family saga following three generations of Cree women and the storytelling tradition that connects them to each other.

Sometimes I feel that I wasn’t born at all, rather sculpted and formed by the storms of my grandmother’s life.

When Eliza comes home from her first year at residential school, she is barely recognizable to her Nôhkom, Swan. Once bright-eyed and curious, Eliza is now stick-thin with roughly shorn hair and dull, listless eyes. Gathering bag in hand, Swan gently leads Eliza on long walks through untouched prairie grasses, harvesting medicines, certain that the power of the land will heal her. And as they walk, she shares stories of her own suffering when her traditional ways of being and living collided with the greed and violence of encroaching settlers. For Eliza, Swan's journey offers a master class in how to face unspeakable adversity and remain true to herself.

Decades later, Eliza and her daughter are at a crossroads. When Ella comes home from her first year at university wearing bell-bottoms, braids, and a beaded headband, Eliza is horrified. Eliza fought her whole life to be free of the oppression that comes with being Cree, and she can’t fathom why her daughter would choose to proclaim her heritage so proudly, disregarding the consequences. With a steaming cup of tea in hand, Eliza follows in her grandmother’s footsteps, sharing with Ella the story of the adversities she faced in her own relentless pursuit of freedom.

But Ella's idea of freedom isn’t the same as Eliza’s. And when tragedy strikes, Ella must decide how to build her life in the aftermath and navigate how best to keep the stories of her family alive when the world around her seems to want them buried along with the legions of the missing and the dead.
  • Published: 8 September 2026
  • ISBN: 9781039011434
  • Imprint: Random House Canada
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $39.99

About the author

Michelle Good

MICHELLE GOOD is a Cree writer and a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. After working with Indigenous organizations for twenty-five years, she obtained her law degree as a 43-year-old single mom and then spent fourteen years advocating for residential school survivors. She earned her MFA in creative writing while still practising law. Her debut novel, Five Little Indians, became a #1 bestseller and won the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, the Amazon First Novel Award, the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and CBC's Canada Reads. It was also nominated for the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Giller Prize, among other honours. Good's bestselling book Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous Life in Canada was shortlisted for the Balsillie Prize for Public Policy. In 2025, she won the Indspire Award for Arts and was admitted as a member of the Order of Canada.
portrait photo of Michelle Good

Praise for Eliza Sunshine

“Creating a gripping ode and elegy, Michelle Good has chosen to tell a story that is near to her heart, and the profound depth of care shines through on every page. Eliza Sunshine unflinchingly traces the indelible traumas of racism and sexual violence yet celebrates the vitality and depth of her characters’ connections through generations and matriarchal resistance. An ultimately uplifting and timeless story.” —Eden Robinson, author of the Trickster Trilogy
“Good writes like a daughter, a mother, a grand­daughter, a great-great-granddaughter, into the timeless continuum that we are. These matriarchal stories bear witness to the great strength we come from. Eliza Sunshine affirms we are alive, made of this blood and land, and that we will survive and thrive, creating change for those we’ve loved, those we love, and those we love who are not yet born.” —Marie Clements, writer, director, and producer of the Bones of Crows film and television series
“In a sweeping, generational epic, Michelle Good captures the lived experiences of First Nations women caught in the mouth of genocide. Eliza Sunshine moves beautifully, sorrowfully and literally through the devastation of the buffalo slaughter and its aftermath on families, focusing on the impact on women. However, the backbone of this book is not loss, but love—the endless love of mothers and their insistence that we survive to tell our truths. Eliza Sunshine will fill you with hope, anger and pride. All First Nations women are descendants of warriors; their matriarchal power speaks through us, is never forgotten, and is vibrantly felt in the heroic tale of all the women who speak through Eliza Sunshine.” —Tanya Talaga, journalist and award-winning author of Seven Fallen Feathers and The Knowing
“Eliza Sunshine is a beautiful and painful story that moves across a landscape of extermination, hunger, and a genocide that few people know. It is a should-read for those who want to know more and a must-read for First Nations so we never forget.” —Maria Campbell, author of Halfbreed