Douglas & McIntyre, 200 pp, $29.95, hardcover.

Someone told me that Ian was the funnier of the Ferguson brothers, even though he and brother Will were both shortlisted for a Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour for their acclaimed 2001 book How to Be a Canadian. And the back cover of Village of the Small Houses led me to expect "a poignant and very funny memoir". It is poignant at times, and it is, as its subtitle notes, A Memoir of Sorts, but it isn't funny.

Sure, it gets off to a rollicking start with Ian's dad-to-be trying to get his mom (who has gone into labour earlier than expected) to the hospital, which requires an icy road trip to the last ferry across the Peace River to Fort Vermilion, Alberta. But it soon becomes a sentimental story about growing up in the North with rednecks and Natives. The first half of the book centres mostly on his father, until dad abandons the family in Saskatchewan. Mom and the kids (six by now) head back to northern Alberta, where the story switches its focus to the relationship between whites and Natives. Mostly they are divided, but Ian's best friend is Lloyd Loonskin.

Although Ferguson paints a vivid picture of northern life during the '60s and '70s, Village of the Small Houses doesn't hold up as memoir, and not just because, as he states in a disclaimer, "I haven't let the facts get in the way of the story I was trying to tell." It's more because he neglects the story of his family (other than his dad and brother Dan) in favour of trying to emphasize his affinity toward Natives, and especially his best friend.

The story itself starts and ends with Ferguson's childhood, which he leaves behind when he says goodbye to Loonskin and boards a bus for Edmonton. The book might have been more satisfying had he left it at that, but a curious epilogue that shows just how far away he managed to get from his youth and his onetime best friend made his tale of growing up as a good kid among rednecks seem disingenuous--unless his purpose was to show us how a good child can become an adult jerk.