Geography of Blood Unearthing Memory from a Prairie Landscape

•Finalist, Hilary Weston Writers Trust Prize for Non-Fiction

When Candace Savage and her partner buy a house in the romantic little town of Eastend, she has no idea what awaits her. At first she enjoys exploring the area around their new home, including the boyhood haunts of the celebrated American writer Wallace Stegner, the back roads of the Cypress Hills, the dinosaur skeletons at the T.Rex Discovery Centre, the fossils to be found in the dust-dry hills. She also revels in her encounters with the wild inhabitants of this mysterious land-three coyotes in a ditch at night, their eyes glinting in the dark; a deer at the window; a cougar pussy-footing it through a gully a few minutes' walk from town.

But as Savage explores further, she uncovers a darker reality-a story of cruelty and survival set in the still-recent past--and finds that she must reassess the story she grew up with as the daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of prairie homesteaders.

Beautifully written, impeccably researched, and imbued with Savage's passion for this place, A Geography of Blood offers both a shocking new version of plains history and an unforgettable portrait of the windswept, shining country of the Cypress Hills.

"In this book the gifted Candace Savage has written a part-memoir, part-history of the Eastend, Saskatchewan area where I spent half my life. She has done it with wonder, precision, praise and grief, adding to and extending the body of work about this extraordinary place, filling in gaps and providing another point of view. It is a heart-warming, yet incisive work that any reader will find hard to put down."—Sharon Butala, author of Perfection of the Morning

In this journey of discovery, Candace Savage uncovers the memories buried in the land around East End, Saskatchewan, beginning with its treasure house of fossils and the dinosaur bones now housed at the T. Rex Discovery Centre. More disturbingly, she gradually unearths the "deep human narrative," a horrifying but little-known story of displacement, suffering, and the eventual decimation of the indigenous population.

When Savage and her partner buy a house in East End on a whim, she has no idea what she is in for. At first she enjoys exploring the area around their new home, including the Wild West setting of Cody, Wyoming; the back roads of the Cypress Hills; the dinosaur skeletons at the discovery centre; the fossils to be found in the dust-dry hills. She also revels in her encounters with the wild inhabitants of this mysterious land—three wolves in a ditch at night, their green eyes glinting in the dark; a coyote howling; a cougar casually loping by. But as Savage explores further, she uncovers a darker reality—the little-known history of the Native people who were displaced from their homes, forced onto reserves, and deliberately starved by the Canadian government—and finds that she must reassess the story she grew up with as the daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of sodbusters on the prairie.

Beautifully written, impeccably researched, and imbued with Savage's passion for this place, A Geography of Blood offers both a shocking new version of western history and an unforgettable portrait of the windswept, shining country of Cypress Hills, a holy place that helps us remember.

When Candace Savage and her partner buy a house near the Saskatchewan-Montana border, her naturalists instinct propels her to explore the area. She takes pleasure in the wild-west setting, discovering hidden back roads, dinosaur skeletons at the discovery centre, and fossils in the dust-dry hills. She also revels in her encounters with the lands wild inhabitants—wolves, cougars and howling coyotes.

But as Savage explores further, she uncovers a darker reality—the little-known history of the Native people who were displaced from their homes, forced onto reserves, and deliberately starved—and finds that she must reassess her own familys history as prairie sodbusters.Beautifully written, impeccably researched, and imbued with Savage's passion for this place, A Geography of Blood offers both a shocking new version of western history and an unforgettable portrait of the windswept, shining country of Cypress Hills, a holy place that helps us remember.

Candace Savage is the author of numerous internationally acclaimed books on subjects ranging from natural history and science to popular culture. She is the author of the best-selling natural history titles Bird Brains: The Intelligence of Crows, Ravens, Magpies and Jays and Prairie: A Natural History, for which she won two Saskatchewan Book Awards and a Gold Medal from ForeWord Magazine in 2004. She is also a frequent contributor to numerous periodicals, including Canadian Geographic. She lives in Saskatoon, SK.