02639cam a2200397u  450000100100000000300080001000500170001800700030003500800410003802000220007902000250010103500200012604000450014604200080019104300120019905000270021105500250023805500250026305500120028808200200030010000300032024500760035025000110042626000460043730000460048352012890052960000500181860000430186865000510191165000390196265000470200165000530204865000450210165000600214665100350220661427450 MeVbMML20250716144009.0ta110309s2006    oncabc        000 0aeng c  a0676977529c22.00  a9780676977523 (hbk.)  a(OCoLC)61427450  aUBYcUBYdNLCdORUdYDXCPdUBYdMEUdAJM  apcc  an-cn-sn 4aPR9199.3.W47bO48 2006 0aPS8545 I38bZ47 200600aPS8545 I38bZ47 200602aPS8545*0 a971.24/2aB2221 aWiebe, Rudy Henry,d1934-10aOf this earth :ba Mennonite boyhood in the boreal forest /cRudy Wiebe  a1st ed  aToronto :bAlfred A. Knopf Canada,cc2006  aix, 391 p. :bill., maps, ports. ;c22 cm  aIn Of This Earth, Rudy Wiebe gives vivid life again to the vanished world of Speedwell, Saskatchewan, an isolated, poplar-forested, mostly Mennonite community – and Rudy’s first home. Too young to do heavy work, Rudy witnessed a way of life that was soon to disappear. And we experience with him the hard labour of clearing the stony, silty bushland; the digging out of precious wells one bucket of dirt at a time; sorrow at the death of a beloved sister; the disorienting searches for grazing cattle in the vast wilderness sloughs and the sweet discovery of the power of reading.

Rare personal photographs (reproduced throughout the book) and the fragile memories of those who are left give shape to the story of Mennonite immigrants building a life in Canada, the growth and decline of the small Speedwell community, the sway of religion, and a young boy’s growing love of the extreme beauty of the aspen forests – as well as how all these elements came to inform his destiny as a writer.

A hymn to a lost place and a distant time, Of This Earth follows the best of memoirs in the tradition of Sharon Butala’s The Perfection of the Morning and W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz. It is an evocation of the Canadian west that only a writer of Rudy Wiebe’s powers could summon.10aWiebe, Rudy Henry, 1934-xChildhood and youth16aWiebe, Rudy, 1934-xEnfance et jeuness 0aMennoniteszSaskatchewanzSpeedwellvBiography 0aFarm lifezSaskatchewanzSpeedwell 0aAuthors, Canadiany20th centuryvBiography 6aMennoniteszSaskatchewanzSpeedwellvBiographies 6aVie  ̉la fermezSaskatchewanzSpeedwell 6aÉcrivains canadiens-anglaisy20e sic̈levBiographies 6aSpeedwell (Sask.)vBiographies