Richard Wagamese was just a toddler in 1958 when his parents left him and his three young siblings in a bush camp in northwestern Ontario for days while they drank in a town 60 miles away.

It was February, and when the firewood and food ran out, his older brother and sister hauled him and another brother into town on a sled in a snowstorm. There they huddled, crying, freezing and hungry, next to a railroad depot.

“A passing Ontario provincial policeman found us and took us to the Children’s Aid Society,” Mr. Wagamese (pronounced WOG-a-mees) wrote in an essay, “Returning to Harmony.” “I would not see my mother or my extended family again for 21 years.”

Those hard early years proved to be a wellspring for a writing career. Mr. Wagamese’s search for identity, peace and belonging as a member of an indigenous people, the Ojibwe, inspired articles, essays and more than a dozen books.