Reading The River

Framed within her own view of this great river, well-known prairie writer Myrna Kostash has combed the available literature to compile this compendium of writings - poetry, fiction and non-fiction -- from those who spent time reading the river. Beginning with Saskatchewan River Crossing, at the river's source, she takes the reader through 21 communities along the North Saskatchewan, from Edmonton to Prince Albert, from Shandro Crossing (Alberta) to The Pas (Manitoba). Included are the words of people from writers like Hugh McLennan, Eli Mandel, Aritha van Herk, John V. Hicks, and Tomson Highway, to the explorer Alexander Mackenzie, 19th Century mountaineer James Monroe Thorington, to a Cree legend. Reading the River opens with an introduction by Myrna Kostash, and a charting of the geological origins of the North Saskatchewan River, and closes it with The Future River, a commentary in several voices on, among other things, the river's likely return to a place of prominence in prairie lives, not as a transportation route, but this time as a source of crucial fresh water. Each author has a concise biography, setting their remarks in the context of their time and their works. What emerges is a portrait of this vital lifeline, the terrain and the culture that grew, and is growing, on its shores, to be appreciated by anyone who travels on, along, or merely to, the great river.