Reading the River

This is the story of the North Saskatchewan River in multiple voices, including writing by famous names and those less familiar, from its rise in the Rocky Mountains to its exit into Lake Winnipeg.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, nineteenth-century mountaineer James Monroe Thorington, to a Cree legend.