'A Geography of Blood' by Candace Savage. Photo: AFP
By exploring the area around her holiday destination of Eastend, southern
Saskatchewan, Savage looks at the area's wildlife both present day and through preserved remains, but finds that her own childhood stories about the area's historic human migrations might not have contained the whole and unpleasant truth.
"A two-week vacation evolves into a decade-long fascination with the region and the writing of A Geography of Blood, a part-memoir, part history, part geological survey, part lament, part condemnation of the accepted myth of the settlement of the Western Plains, and above all, a haunting meditation on time and place," said the Writers Trust jury panel.
Also shortlisted were Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes by Kamal Al-Solaylee; Solar Dance: Genius, Forgery and the Crisis of Truth in the Modern Age by Modris Eksteins; Straphanger: Saving Our Cities and Ourselves from the Automobile by Taras Grescoe; and JJ Lee's The Measure of a Man: The Story of a Father, a Son, and a Suit.