
Permanent Astonishment
Growing Up Cree in the Land of Snow and Sky
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $22.50
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Jimmy Blais
-
By:
-
Tomson Highway
About this listen
Capricious, big-hearted, joyful: an epic memoir from one of Canada’s most acclaimed Indigenous writers and performers
Tomson Highway was born in a snowbank on an island in the sub-Arctic, the 11th of 12 children in a nomadic, caribou-hunting Cree family who traversed the tundra by dogsled and lived off the land. In Permanent Astonishment, one of the greatest writers of our time animates the magical world of his northern childhood, paying tribute to a way of life that few have experienced and fewer still have chronicled.
Growing up in a land of 10,000 lakes and islands, Tomson Highway relished being pulled by dogsled beneath a night sky alive with stars; sucking the juices from roasted muskrat tails; and singing country music songs with his impossibly beautiful older sister and her teenaged friends. Surrounded by the love of his family and the vast, mesmerizing landscape they called home, his was in many ways an idyllic far north childhood. But five of Tomson’s siblings died in childhood, and Balazee and Joe Highway, who loved their surviving children profoundly, wanted their two youngest sons, Tomson and Rene, to enjoy opportunities as big as the world. And so when Tomson was six, he and Rene were flown south by float plan to attend a residential school and begin the rest of their education.
In 1990, Rene Highway, a world-renowned dancer, died of an AIDS-related illness. Permanent Astonishment is Tomson's extravagant embrace of his younger brother's final words: Don’t mourn me, be joyful.
Infused with joy and outrageous humor, Permanent Astonishment offers insights, both hilarious and profound, into the Cree experience of culture, conquest, and survival.
©2021 Tomson Highway (P)2021 Doubleday CanadaListeners also enjoyed...
-
What Strange Paradise
- A Novel
- By: Omar El Akkad
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another overfilled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives back in their homelands. But miraculously, someone has survived the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who is soon rescued by Vänna. Vänna.
-
-
Absolutely terrific.
- By Catherine Kennedy on 08-14-21
By: Omar El Akkad
-
Northland
- A 4,000-Mile Journey Along America's Forgotten Border
- By: Porter Fox
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America's northern border is the world's longest international boundary, yet it remains obscure even to Americans. Travel writer Porter Fox spent two years exploring its length by canoe, freighter, and car - and in Northland, he delivers the little-known history of the region and a riveting account of his travels. Fox follows explorer Samuel de Champlain's adventures; recounts the rise and fall of the iron, wheat, and timber industries; crosses the Great Lakes on a freighter; and tracks America's fur traders through the Boundary Waters.
-
-
Great listen - great narrator
- By Jonathan on 01-10-19
By: Porter Fox
-
Drive
- An Expanse Short Story
- By: James S. A. Corey
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A short story set in the universe of James S. A. Corey's NYT best-selling Expanse series. Now a Prime Original series. This story will be available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion.
-
-
Fun little short story
- By Carson on 12-28-21
-
Run Towards the Danger
- Confrontations with a Body of Memory
- By: Sarah Polley
- Narrated by: Sarah Polley
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this extraordinary book, Sarah Polley explores what it is to live in one’s body, in a constant state of becoming, learning, and changing. Each of these six essays captures a piece of Polley’s life as she remembers it, while at the same time examining the fallibility of memory, the mutability of reality in the mind, and the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as the person she is now but was not then. As Polley writes, the past and present are in a “reciprocal pressure dance.”
-
-
Really Just a Book About Her Diffcult Moments
- By Andrew on 03-11-22
By: Sarah Polley
-
Horse
- A Novel
- By: Geraldine Brooks
- Narrated by: James Fouhey, Lisa Flanagan, Graham Halstead, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack.
-
-
Love Geraldine Brooks
- By Regina on 06-25-22
By: Geraldine Brooks
-
Sun House
- A Novel
- By: David James Duncan
- Narrated by: Robb Moreira, Barrie Kreinik, Elena Rey, and others
- Length: 42 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A random bolt from a DC-8 falls from the sky, killing a child and throwing the faith of a young Jesuit Jesuit into crisis. A boy’s mother dies on his fifth birthday, sparking a lifetime of repressed anger that he unleashes once a year in reckless duels with the Fate, God, or Power who let the coincidence happen. A young woman on a run in Seattle experiences a shooting star moment that pierces her with a love that will eventually help heal the Jesuit, the angry young man, and innumerable others.
-
-
Too saccharine to finish
- By Tom Sumter on 11-08-23
-
What Strange Paradise
- A Novel
- By: Omar El Akkad
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
More bodies have washed up on the shores of a small island. Another overfilled, ill-equipped, dilapidated ship has sunk under the weight of its too many passengers: Syrians, Ethiopians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Palestinians, all of them desperate to escape untenable lives back in their homelands. But miraculously, someone has survived the passage: nine-year-old Amir, a Syrian boy who is soon rescued by Vänna. Vänna.
-
-
Absolutely terrific.
- By Catherine Kennedy on 08-14-21
By: Omar El Akkad
-
Northland
- A 4,000-Mile Journey Along America's Forgotten Border
- By: Porter Fox
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 9 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
America's northern border is the world's longest international boundary, yet it remains obscure even to Americans. Travel writer Porter Fox spent two years exploring its length by canoe, freighter, and car - and in Northland, he delivers the little-known history of the region and a riveting account of his travels. Fox follows explorer Samuel de Champlain's adventures; recounts the rise and fall of the iron, wheat, and timber industries; crosses the Great Lakes on a freighter; and tracks America's fur traders through the Boundary Waters.
-
-
Great listen - great narrator
- By Jonathan on 01-10-19
By: Porter Fox
-
Drive
- An Expanse Short Story
- By: James S. A. Corey
- Narrated by: Jefferson Mays
- Length: 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A short story set in the universe of James S. A. Corey's NYT best-selling Expanse series. Now a Prime Original series. This story will be available in the complete Expanse story collection, Memory’s Legion.
-
-
Fun little short story
- By Carson on 12-28-21
-
Run Towards the Danger
- Confrontations with a Body of Memory
- By: Sarah Polley
- Narrated by: Sarah Polley
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this extraordinary book, Sarah Polley explores what it is to live in one’s body, in a constant state of becoming, learning, and changing. Each of these six essays captures a piece of Polley’s life as she remembers it, while at the same time examining the fallibility of memory, the mutability of reality in the mind, and the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as the person she is now but was not then. As Polley writes, the past and present are in a “reciprocal pressure dance.”
-
-
Really Just a Book About Her Diffcult Moments
- By Andrew on 03-11-22
By: Sarah Polley
-
Horse
- A Novel
- By: Geraldine Brooks
- Narrated by: James Fouhey, Lisa Flanagan, Graham Halstead, and others
- Length: 14 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kentucky, 1850. An enslaved groom named Jarret and a bay foal forge a bond of understanding that will carry the horse to record-setting victories across the South. When the nation erupts in civil war, an itinerant young artist who has made his name on paintings of the racehorse takes up arms for the Union. On a perilous night, he reunites with the stallion and his groom, very far from the glamor of any racetrack.
-
-
Love Geraldine Brooks
- By Regina on 06-25-22
By: Geraldine Brooks
-
Sun House
- A Novel
- By: David James Duncan
- Narrated by: Robb Moreira, Barrie Kreinik, Elena Rey, and others
- Length: 42 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A random bolt from a DC-8 falls from the sky, killing a child and throwing the faith of a young Jesuit Jesuit into crisis. A boy’s mother dies on his fifth birthday, sparking a lifetime of repressed anger that he unleashes once a year in reckless duels with the Fate, God, or Power who let the coincidence happen. A young woman on a run in Seattle experiences a shooting star moment that pierces her with a love that will eventually help heal the Jesuit, the angry young man, and innumerable others.
-
-
Too saccharine to finish
- By Tom Sumter on 11-08-23
Critic reviews
Winner of The 2021 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize For Nonfiction
Nominated for The 2022 Evergreen Award
Named one of the best books of 2021 by The Globe and Mail • Winnipeg Free Press • CBC
"Permanent Astonishment is a mesmerizing story rich in detail about growing up in a Cree-speaking family in Northern Manitoba and later in a residential school. Highway’s writing delights in tales of eating muskrat tails, speaking Cree (and learning English), preparing for a Christmas concert, and listening to Hank Snow on a transistor radio. While unstinting about the abuse he and others suffered, Highway makes a bold personal choice to accentuate the wondrousness of his school years resulting in a book that shines with the foundational sparks of adolescence: innocence, fear, and amazement." (2021 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction jury)
"Mesmerizing." (The Globe and Mail)
"Exquisitely written and both hilarious and painful, Permanent Astonishment is a testament to the power of culture, language, family and the land." (Winnipeg Free Press)
What listeners say about Permanent Astonishment
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Christine Buller
- 08-31-22
Beautiful, joyful memoire.
I love Tomson’s ability to write about the joy and beauty in his life alongside the hardships and tragedy of the residential school environment. His description of his way of life in Northern Canada is magical. His attitude towards life is inspiring.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Mel H.
- 10-27-21
great listen!!
I put off finishing this because I was enjoying the stories so much. Highly recommend.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!