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Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest

by Rudy Wiebe

Playing guide to his readers, Edmonton author Rudy Wiebe leads us up into remote northern Saskatchewan to a predominantly Mennonite community called Speedwell, where his family took on the gruelling task of homesteading and farming while the author was a young boy in the 1930s and ’40s.

Our guide does very well in describing the terrain, a segment of “the boreal forest that wraps itself like an immense muffler around the shoulders of North America; the isolated spot where my particular life appeared.” Early on, though, readers may find it difficult to feel Wiebe’s passion for “the ground of whatever I was or would be, root and spirit,” as Wiebe describes his place of birth.

This is not to say Wiebe himself is not devoted to this landscape and the part of his life lived on it. Readers sense his passion and engagement on topics such as the devout faith that underpinned his family and community, but it’s as if these strong feelings have receded and been stepped back from a few too many times. Consequently, Wiebe’s voice strikes a measured, even staid tone. In the third chapter, “Wrath,” a mysterious stranger walks into the community at the same time that Biblical pronouncements of doom appear painted in red on the rocks. “It seemed the walking stranger had spoken to no one, nor entered any yard. Odd.” Perhaps it was enough for Wiebe to gesture at the stranger and the red painted pronouncements. But a bolder gesture from the writer, even when he’s relying on secondary testimonials (he was often too young to have observed events and people himself), would have allowed readers to see the stranger and witness more fully the community’s reaction.

Wiebe also presents the people immediately surrounding him with the same imperceptible nods. Readers meet the family matriarch, Wiebe’s mother. She’s tough, treating the ache from rotten teeth with kerosene at one point. But she’s weary, too, though Wiebe only hints at this.

Readers do learn of a unique people, material culture (architecture especially), and language, but Of This Earth ultimately feels too rational and intellectual to work as a personal memoir.

 

Reviewer: Sean Flinn

Publisher: Knopf Canada

DETAILS

Price: $32.95

Page Count: 416 pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 0-676-97752-9

Released: March

Issue Date: 2006-4

Categories: Memoir & Biography

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