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"I'm a member of the race that invented
nuclear power but hasn't a clue about what to do with
the expended fuel. A race that gave birth to space travel
but has not a clue as to how to clean up its garbage
in space, its garbage at home. But this same race of
humans is also possessed of the wisdom to love a place--even
a forbidding place, as mine has been called."
This is Carpenter's account of life in Saskatchewan, an ecstatic
salute to the seasons. It begins in the gloom of November and
ends around Thanksgiving the following year. Carpenter
likes to think of this book as an example of "creative documentary".
It allows him to remain true to the facts of life around home,
but (if the occasion demands) to exaggerate the size of his
fish.
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Critical Response
Those who despair over the divisive politics
that shake our country will take heart from this very Canadian
book. To enter David Carpenter's world is to travel in the
company of a man who has learned to love, and to express that
love in friendship and small deeds....Carpenter writes about
fishing with more passion, poetry and philosophy than anyone
I've read since Izaak Walton.
- Erna Paris, Globe & Mail
Such is the subtle, considered nature of
this book and of Carpenter's temperate and amiable sensibility
that I was halfway through it, reading with pleasure and amusement,
when it came flooding over me what a very good book it is.
- Sharon Butala
This book is about a life well-lived. The
prose is as clear as the rivers Carp fishes, and just as full
of energy and beauty.
- Paul Quarrington
Reading David Carpenter's Courting Saskatchewan
is like having a conversation with a great, wise and somewhat
eccentric friend you've been aching long months to see again.
These are lucid, firm-footed, truly bright, sometimes extremely
funny essays that are smart about everything they touch upon:
the wan goose moon of late winter, the odorous onset of spring
on the prairie, the almost-too-subtle glories of a Saskatoon
summer. I'm aware that Canadians are always telling other
Canadians, as well as the rest of us, what it's truly like
to be Canadian. But Carpenter would seem to have the real
goods, here, since underlying all in his writing is the sweet
heart's song of life going on, wherein lies the truth.
- Richard Ford
If one were to choose the one place in Western
Canada that has a regional culture, Saskatchewan would have
to be it. David Carpenter has just made a significant contribution
to that culture, guiding us through a rich lore that ranges
from cranky block heaters to saskatoon berry pie recipes and
from quinzhees to the Broadway Bridge.
- Don Gayton
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 Reading
Excerpt
(4:08Min/2.9MB)
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