"There are things that it is impossible to learn when you are young, no matter how much you read and study." The season of fury and wonder, in Sharon Butala's world, is the old age of women. These stories present the lives of old women – women of experience, who've seen much of life, who've tasted of its sweetness and its bitter possibilities, and have developed opinions and come to conclusions about what it all amounts to. These are stories of today's old women, who understand that they have been created by their pasts. But there's another layer to this standard-setting example of "cronelit." Not content to rest on her considerable literary laurels, Sharon Butala continues to push the boundaries of her art. The stories in Season of Fury and Wonder are all reactions to other, classic, works of literature that she has encountered and admired. These stories are, in their various ways, inspired by and tributes to works by the likes of Raymond Carver, Willa Cather, James Joyce,...

Luna is bestselling author Sharon Butala's second brilliant novel in her loosely linked trilogy that begins with The Gates of the Sun, and ends with The Fourth Archangel. Selling out its first printing within months when it was first re-issued in 1994, this is a classic Sharon Butala novel. Luna is the story of three prairie women at the crossroads of their lives. Rhea, still strong and proud at 80, contemplates her death, and her pioneer life, the years of loneliness she endured, tears seeping from her body while she kneaded her loaves of bread. Selena, Rhea's niece, struggling to come to terms with her teenaged daughter's pregnancy, wonders if her way of life is changing forever. And Diane, Selena's sister, until now a woman cloaked in the busy fabric of farming life suppers, chores and gardening, leaves for the city on a search for freedom, for identity and for self. Each of them is inexorably a part of the vast prairie landscape, its seemingly...

When it was first published, The Perfection of the Morning catapulted Sharon Butala into literary stardom, causing the Toronto Star to crown her as "one of this country's true visionaries." At once a meditation on the world of nature and a personal and spiritual exploration of the roots of creativity, The Perfection of the Morning is Sharon Butala's search for a connection with the prairie that encompassed and often overwhelmed her. More resonant today than ever before, The Perfection of the Morning is a book for Butala's many loyal readers, as well as the perfect introduction for new fans.

The perfection of the novel: a sweeping tale of a woman's loss and discovery from the best-selling author of The Perfection of the Morning.Sharon Butala achieved that magical combination of critical acclaim and popular sales success with her #1 national bestseller, The Perfection of the Morning (over 50,000 copies sold). Now, in what many are predicting will be her most powerful novel ever, Sharon Butala returns to Perfection territory in a profoundly moving tale of two generations of western women and their search to heal themselves.A farm woman like her mother and her grandmother before her, Iris finds her comfortable rhythm of prairie life shattered forever when her husband dies suddenly. She begins a search for the niece she raised as a daughter, but has not seen for ten years. Lannie, fleeing from her own past, is desperately trying to save others -- and herself -- in the drought-ravaged deserts of Ethiopia. In her quest for Lannie, Iris must come to terms with her rage, her longing for love and the inexorable truths of nature.The Garden of Eden is a transforming story that travels deep into the heart of contemporary womanhood and challenges the myth of the West. A search for redemption in a landscape on the edge of ruin, The Garden of Eden is a passionate testament to Sharon Butala's immense talent as a writer and interpreter of our own search for a place in the world.

In 1961, Alexandra Wiwcharuk was found murdered on the banks of the Saskatchewan River. As Sharon Butala writes, all of Saskatoon " came to a stop," stunned by the brutal death of an attractive young woman who was a graduate nurse and had been crowned a beauty queen in local pageants. The murder became a touchstone moment for Saskatoon. More than 40 years later, it still haunts the residents, especially those who, like Butala, were Alexandra's friends. Compelled by her memories of Alex and her time, Butala returns to that still-unsolved murder. In The Girl in Saskatoon— a title taken from a song that Johnny Cash sang to Alex at a concert only months before her death— she faces the horror of those past events to create a portrait of friendship and remembrance, of a time when life appeared so much simpler. Written in Butala's intimate, eloquent style, The Girl in Saskatoon is at once an in-depth investigation of a tragic death, a nostalgic coming-of-age...

In 1985, Sharon Butala' s first collection of short stories, Queen of the Headaches, was nominated for a Governor General' s Award. Her second, Fever, won the 1992 Authors Award for Paperback Fiction and was nominated for a Commonwealth Award. The publication of Real Life, her newest collection, once again shows she is a master of the genre. Real Life contains ten perfectly formed stories, singular moments of emotional intensity about the inner lives we all share. In " Light," a woman whose sister is dying an agonizing death from cancer finds a compelling attraction to the stories of Holocaust survivors. In " Real Life," Raine, a middle-aged divorced woman, runs into her former husband-- and the still-sharp pain of an affair that changed the course of their lives. " Keeping House" tells of a daughter' s impending divorce, forcing her mother to re-examine her own abusive first marriage. Each story presents the...

An intimate and uplifting book about finding renewal and hope through grief and loss."It was a terrible life; it was an enchanted life; it was a blessed life. And, of course, one day it ended." —Sharon Butala In the tradition of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, Diana Athill's Somewhere Towards the End, and Atul Gawande's Being Mortal comes a revelatory new book from one of our beloved writers. When Sharon Butala's husband, Peter, died unexpectedly, she found herself with no place to call home. Torn by grief and loss, she fled the ranchlands of southwest Saskatchewan and moved to the city, leaving almost everything behind. A lifetime of possessions was reduced to a few boxes of books, clothes, and keepsakes. But a lifetime of experience went with her, and a limitless well of memory—of personal failures, of a marriage that everybody said would not last but did, of the unbreakable bonds of family. ...