Mass Market Paperbound
408 Pages, 4.2 x 7 x 0.9 in
February 25, 1995
McClelland & Stewart
0771034547
9780771034541
From Our Editors
Winner of the 1973 Governor General's Award, Rudy
Wiebe's The Temptations of Big
Bear is the story of a Plains Cree chieftain who
refuses to acknowledge the white men's ownership of his homeland
and settle on a reservation. This sweeping novel combines history
with imaginative narrative that captures one man's courageous
struggle against the destruction of his people.
From the Publisher
"What can that mean, I and my family will have a 'reserve of one
square mile'?"
So asks Big Bear of Governor Morris, come to impose a square treaty
on the round, buffalo-covered world of the Plains Cree. As the
buffalo vanish and the tension builds to the second Riel Rebellion,
Big Bear alone of the prairie chiefs keeps up pressure for a better
treaty by refusing to choose a reserve. He argues, "If any man has
the right to put a rope around another man's neck, some day someone
will get choked."
It is Big Bear's story - and the story of Wandering Spirit, of
Kitty McLean and John McDougall-that is told in this novel with
rare and penetrating power. Permeated with a sense of place and
time, this eagerly awaited work by Rudy Wiebe reflects the author's
sensitivity to the Canadian prairies, their history, the minds and
hearts of their diverse people.
Exploring Big Bear's isolated struggle, Wiebe has encompassed in
one creative sweep not only his hero's struggle for integrity, but
the whole range and richness of the Plains culture. Here is the
giant circle of the prairie horizon, and the joy, the sorrow, the
pain and the triumph and the violence of unconquerable human beings
faced with destruction.
About the Author
Acclaimed as one of Canada's foremost novelists, Rudy
Wiebe's reputation began in 1962 with the publication of
his first novel, Peace Shall Destroy Many. Born in
Saskatchewan in 1934, he spent his youth there and in Coaldale,
Alberta. By the time he graduated from the University of Alberta he
had already published a number of poems and short stories. In 1963
he taught at Goshen College, Indiana, and later, after studying
creative writing at the University of Iowa, returned to the
University of Alberta, where he continued to teach in the English
Department. His short stories have appeared in Tamarack Review,
Fiddlehead and Prism international. Besides editing
several story anthologies, he has published three other novels,
First and Vital Candle (1966), The Blue Mountains of
China (1970), and Peace Shall Destroy Many (1962)
which is now available in a New Canadian Library paperback reprint.