Of This Earth: a Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest

By Rudy Wiebe

Book Overview

Rudy Wiebe has written award-winning fiction for decades. He is recognized as one of Canada's finest literary treasures. Twice he has received Canada's most prestigious prize for fiction writing: The Governor-General's Award (equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize for fiction). Now comes new recognition for Wiebe's nonfiction writing. His recently released childhood memoir, Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest, has won the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Nonfiction (considered to be the country's most prestigious literary nonfiction prize). The book holds Rudy's memoirs of growing up through age 12. His immigrant family cut a farm out of stony bushland in remote Saskatchewan. They hand-dug their well, climbed a ladder to their beds under the rafters, farmed with horses, and traveled by sleigh on the frontier. Stories and singing and food from their native Ukraine and Poland held them and filled their bodies and souls. Of This Earth is written with "spare and eloquent prose," say the jurors who chose the book for the Charles Taylor Prize. Wiebe "conveys the riches of a hardscrabble inheritance; a love of words, reading and music, a sustaining yet unsentimental faith, and a bond with the natural world, all of which have provided a compass for his writing life." One of the Taylor-Prize jurors reflected, "Rudy's book haunts you; it stays with you."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1561486027
• ISBN13: 9781561486021
• Release Date: November 2007
• Publisher: Good Books
• Length: 391 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Masterful

From the first page, I could see why "Of This Earth" won the Charles Taylor Prize. I had read two of Rudy Wiebe's other books, "Stolen Life" and "Peace Shall Destroy Many", and thought them well written, but the writing in this book is amazing! It's original and intricate and yet it never distracts or confuses, painting the scenes of a life so clearly that the reader is standing right beside young Rudy as he runs under the belly of a draft horse or sits at the kindergarten table in a one-room school house. I know I'll read this book over and over just to enjoy the way he uses words. It's a masterpiece!