Photographed by Jennifer Chipperfield, Chipperfield Photography
From the author of the 2017 Governor General's nominee in Non-fiction (third nomination), Where I Live Now, comes a new mystery novel.

Fiona Lychenko, now a woman in her late sixties – has spent years researching the death of her high school classmate Zara Stanley, who was brutally murdered at the age of twenty. Determined to solve the crime – something the police weren’t able to do – Fiona interviewed everyone she could in her hometown of Ripley, but every trail led to the same dead end. She even published her findings in a book, hoping it would lead to anonymous clues from readers and outliers, and still – nothing. Now, a decade later, Fiona has finally given up hope that the killer would ever be caught. 

Zara's Dead That is until a brown manila envelope turns up under her door and Fiona once again finds herself embroiled in the midst of a controversy so intricate and tangled that one wrong move could be her undoing.

Based on the true story of the 1962 murder of a young woman in Saskatoon, Zara’s Dead is the fictional retelling of a very real story, one that has captivated the public and eluded answers for decades. 

Sharon Butala is an award-winning and bestselling author of both fiction and nonfiction. Her classic book The Perfection of the Morning was a #1 bestseller and a finalist for the Governor General’s Award. Fever, a short story collection, won the 1992 Authors’ Award for Paperback Fiction and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for best book (Canada and Caribbean region). Her novel, Wild Rose, also with Coteau, was published in 2015 and was shortlisted for the W.O. Mitchell Book Prize. Butala is a recipient of the Marian Engel Award, the Saskatchewan Order of Merit, and the 2012 Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Award for Literary Excellence. In 2002 she became an Officer of the Order of Canada. She is a three-time Governor General’s Award nominee.
Upcoming Events

APRIL 26, 2018

Calgary Book Club appearance

MAY 18, 2018

Calgary Book Club Appearance

MAY 23, 2018

Launch of Zara’s Dead at Shelf Life Books (further details to be confirmed)

MAY 24, 2018

Launch of Zara’s Dead at McNally Robinson, Saskatoon (further details TBC)

MAY 26 OR 27, 2018

Launch of Zara’s Dead at McNally Robinson, Winnipeg (further details to be confirmed)

JUNE 1, 2018

Memoir workshop at Writers Guild of Alberta Annual General Meeting, Calgary – Conference and AGM June 1 – 3, 2018 Alberta Literary Awards Gala June 2, 2018 WHERE: Conference: Memorial Park Library 1221 2 St SW, Calgary Gala: Hyatt Regency 700 Centre […]

JUNE 10, 2018

Fish Creek, Calgary Public Library reading @ 2 P.M.

JULY 21, 2018

Launch of Zara’s Dead at Moose Jaw 2018 Festival of Words (further details to be confirmed)

Coteau Books

Order now:   Indie Stores Online   |   Your Local Bookstore
I've been a writer for forty years this year, and along with the inevitable cynicism about the whole business of writing and publishing, celebrity and wealth (actually, non-wealth and non-celebrity) has come something like wonder at how those forty years of practice have brought me to a level of skill I didn't know I had in me. That is, I didn't know I wasn't doing it, until I began to be able to do it. Writing was often so hard that the only reason I didn't quit was because I had nothing else I wanted to do; also, I could see myself, if very slowly and gradually, gaining in skill, and that renewed my hope that I might one day be a real writer, the one I had dreamt of from Day One when I wrote and had published a little story about some cattle ranchers confronting  some government boys out on the land.

Only in the last year or two, has that burden I laboured under departed. I still worry about the quality of what I write, and I struggle just as I always have to find the exact word instead of one that will merely do, to take my ideas to a level deeper than I was capable of going before I got old, and then doing the incisive trimming so that I go straight to the heart of the matter, skipping all that meaningless stuff on the way to it. But the sensation of being bowed under a dark, almost unbearable weight as, day after day, for weeks, months, and then years, I wrote and wrote and wrote some more - twenty books now (another to come out in a year) - has pretty much vanished.
Photographed by tali shany/tlv/israel
What was that weight? I don't know, unless it was the weight set on me by the Gods of the Writing Universe to challenge me, a too-small, unworldly, not well- enough-educated woman, living far from the glamorous centres of civilization, wanting to see if I had the guts to persevere even under it, the wit to keep getting better (however minimally), the heart not to forget what I believed writing could mean to people.
This last, in particular, was almost too heavy for me. Some days writing was like wading in a river of black molasses. Was it the River Styx? Yet, in spite of how hard it was, I could not quit. Silly of me? Maybe. But I did not stop wanting more than anything someday to be a real writer.

It only took forty years of trying.
Image by Duane Prentice  
Always most interested in the lives of women, Sharon works to reinterpret the West, telling the familiar stories from a different point of view, and adding the ones that nobody tells because they are too shocking, or too unpleasant, or appear to shed too bad a light on rural Western societies. They are the ones, she believes, that will at last round out the story of the settlement era in the West, and will point the way to the future.

About the Author

Sharon Butala is the author of nineteen books of fiction and nonfiction, numerous essays and articles, some poetry and five produced plays. She published her first novel in 1984, Country of the Heart, which was nominated for the Books in Canada First Novel Award, followed closely by a collection of short stories, Queen of the Headaches. She was born in Nipawin, Saskatchewan. After graduating from the University of Saskatchewan, she taught English in Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Nova Scotia. She eventually returned to Saskatoon, before moving near Eastend, Saskatchewan, to live on her husband, Peter Butala’s ranch.

Sharon’s books have been on the Canadian bestseller lists, including her memoir, The Perfection of the Morning, which reached #1 in July 1994 and remained on the list for over a year. Most recently, Wild Rose was also on the bestseller lists.

Sharon has read all over Canada and in the United States as well as in Mexico, the Czech Republic, and Ireland. She has been a guest at nearly every literary festival in Canada and some US festivals, as well as teaching literally dozens of writing workshops. Sharon has been a guest at the “Geography of Hope” conference on Wallace Stegner, at Point Reyes Station, California. She has also been a guest speaker at Speak to the Wild: a multi-disciplinary gathering dedicated to the politics and poetics of wilderness, at Wells Gray Provincial Park, BC.

She is also in demand as a lecturer, having spoken recently at the Edmonton Jung Forum, the Banff Centre for the Arts Book Discussion Weekend, the “Books ‘n’ Brunch” series in Toronto, the UBC and Hollyhock’s “Summer Speakers’ Series” in Vancouver, the Vancouver Institute, and was a keynote speaker at the narratology conference at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, among other engagements. Sharon has also been a keynote speaker at the International Grasslands conference and delivered the inaugural annual lecture at University of Saskatchewan Creative Writing program.

AWARDS AND HONOURS

Sharon is the recipient of many awards, including:
2017
Governor General’s Award for NonFiction, shortlisted for Where I Live Now
2016
W.O. Mitchell, shortlisted for Wild Rose
2013
University of Alberta, DLitt (honaris causa) June, 2013
2012
Cheryl and Henry Kloppenburg Award for Literary Achievement
2009
Saskatchewan Order of Merit
2009
The Girl in Saskatoon, shortlisted for Arthur Ellis Crimewriters of Canada nonfiction Award
2008
The Girl in Saskatoon, Globe & Mail one hundred best books of 2008
2008
The Girl in Saskatoon, Shortlisted, Saskatchewan Book Awards, nonfiction prize
2007
Chosen as one of 100 Alumni of Influence by University of Saskatchewan to celebrate its Centennial Anniversary in ‘07
2008
The Girl in Saskatoon, Globe & Mail Bestseller list, #7, April 19. (On Wstrn Cdn newspapers’ bestseller lists)
2007
Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, selected to appear in exhibit, “The Order of Canada: They Desire a Better Country.” (June 7/07 opening, for one year)
2006
April, Featured writer: Her-icane Festival, Saskatoon. Certificate of Artistic Achievement for contribution to Sk Lit Arts
2006
Painting by Manon Elder, “The Tea Party” series, 22 Canadian Women of Influence, bought and displayed by University of Ottawa
2005
Nonfiction Award, Saskatchewan Book Awards for Lilac Moon
2005
Lilac Moon Chosen for “The Globe’s Top 100 Books of 2005”
2005
Appointed Distinguished Fellow, St. John’s College University of British Columbia
2003
Honours Award, University of Saskatchewan Alumni Association
2004
Theatre Saskatchewan Inc: Publication of “Rodeo Life”
SEE ALL AWARDS  
2005
Lilac Moon on bestseller lists.
2004
Honorary Doctor of Letters, University of Saskatchewan
2002
Appointed Officer, Order of Canada
2002
Awarded Queen’s Jubilee Medal
2002
Old Man On His Back, bestseller lists
2000
Wild Stone Heart, bestseller lists
2000
Awarded Honorary Doctor of Laws, University of Regina
1998
Marian Engel Award for Women Writers in Mid-Career ($10,000)
1998
Canada Council Literary Award ($20,000)
1996
Gold Award, Western Magazine Awards
1995
Coyote's Morning Cry, Shortlisted, Sk.Book Awards "Book of the Year". 22 weeks on bestseller lists.
1995
Shortlisted, Cdn. Booksellers' Association, "Author of the Year." Paperback bestseller list
1994
The Perfection of the Morning. #1 on bestseller list (July)
1994
Sk. Gold Award, Western Magazine Awards for "Dances With Woodchucks. Western Living, Oct.'93
1994
Readers' Choice Award, Prairie Schooner, Lincoln, Nebraska for "Telling the Truth," and "Postmodernism."
1994
Sk. Book Awards: "Spirit of Saskatchewan" and "NonFiction" Awards
1993
Honourable Mention, Western Magazine Awards, for "A Change of Heart,"Western Living, Oct.'92
1994
Shortlisted, Governor General's Awards for NonFiction
1994
Shortlisted CBC Awards for "Act of Love" (fiction)
1993
Sk. Gold Award for "A Change of Heart."
1993
Canada 125, Commemorative Medal
1993
Shortlisted CBC Awards for "Postmodernism" (fiction)
1992
First for Paperback fiction (Fever) Cdn. Authors' Awards
1991
Member Achievement Award, Sk. Writers' Guild
1991
Runner-Up: Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Fever
1991
National Magazine Awards: Silver for fiction, "Justice."
1991
National Magazine Awards: Hon. Mention for "Field of Broken Dreams." in West
1991
Western Magazine Awards: Two nominations for "Field of Broken Dreams," in West
1991
Shortlisted CBC Awards for "Desire" (fiction)
1989
Sk. Writers'Guild, Major Drama Award for "The Element of Fire."
1988
Canadian Fiction Magazine: Annual Contributors' Prize for "The Prize."
1989
Senior Arts Grant
1988
Canada Council "B" Grant
1986
Writers' Choice selection for The Gates of the Sun
1985
Sk Writers' Guild Major Drama Award: Natural Disasters
1985
Sk. Arts Board Individual Assistance Grants, '84 & '81
1986
Governor General's Awards for Fiction, shortlisted for Queen of the Headaches
1985
Shortlisted, Best First Novel Award, Books in Canada for Country of the Hear
1982
Sk. Writers' Guild Long Fiction Award for Shortgrass (Became Queen of the Headaches)
Recent Work Recent WorkRecent Work

RECENT WORK

Zara's Dead, Sharon's new novel, will be out in May, 2018. This is a mystery with Fiona, the protagonist, now seventy, still angry at the unsolved murder of a young woman with whom she once went to school many years earlier. Zara had been a beauty queen, a promising young woman who dreamt of great things for herself, all snatched away in a few savagery-filled moments, followed by an investigation that almost immediately stalled, then failed. Fiona wants to know why, and she still wants to know who did it. This latter information, when she finally finds it, will alter not only the lives of others, but her own life forever.

Where I Live Now, Sharon's new memoir, is due in April 2017. This memoir is about a life lived on the land in southwest Saskatchewan, both idyllic and difficult and which, after 33 years, ended with the death of Butala's husband. The book goes on from there to follow her through her grief, sorrow and many losses as a new widow, to her struggles to make a new life in the city. As well as offering solace and hope, this book inspires others making the same difficult but ultimately joyful journey.

Wild Rose, Sharon’s most recent novel, published in September 2015, is of the earliest part of the settlement era on the prairies, about Sophie, a young Quebecoise mother who finds she has to make her own way in what was then decisively a man’s world. Wild Rose, an epic story of The West, now long gone, charts Sophie’s journey from underloved child in religion- bound rural Quebec, to headstrong young woman to exhausted homesteader to deserted bride and mother to independent businesswoman finding her way in a hostile, if beautiful, landscape. (Coteau Books)

To purchase Wild Rose online, go to Coteau Books
Wild Rose is available in bookstores.

Saskatchewan, a selection of Sharon’s stories, translated into Hebrew and launched in 2015, Tel Aviv, Israel, (Margena Publishing, 2015)

The Girl in Saskatoon: A Meditation on Friendship, Memory and Murder (HarperCollins, 2008), a nonfiction work about, among other things, the unsolved murder in Saskatoon, back in 1962, of a young woman with whom Butala attended high school. It was an event that shook the city to its core and which no one has been able to forget. Butala probes the background to this fact, and in this book, also examines a forward-looking pioneer society.

REVIEWS

August 17, 2015 ~ Elaine Dewar, author of Smarts: The Boundary-Busting Story of Intelligence (Debonair[e]Books, Trade paperbacks, 2015) 
“I read Wild Rose in the hospital while S. was being treated. This turned out to be wonderful: It took me immediately away from my own concerns to the prairies and into the life of Sophie, her grandparents, her brothers, her Pierre. It is in every way a page turner. There is something downright magical about the way the story unfolds from the present to the past and back again. I will read it again to see if I can see the change-ups coming, but it is so beautifully wrought that there are no seams, you’re just here with Sophie and there with her and right inside her skin. Loved the sense of place, the drive for freedom, the terrors of freedom. The thing that really got to me is Sophie’s sense of a spiritual reality, something quite separate from the rituals of the church. It’s a terrific read.”

September 2015

Prairie Messenger Review by Gerry Schmitz….’Through 16 works of fiction and non-fiction Sharon Butala has established herself as a preeminent literary voice of the Canadian prairie experience. Moreover, her own deep observations and compelling characters challenge narratives of western development that are too often male-dominated and anglo-centric.‘ For the full review, go to Prairie Messenger

September 2015

Review by Shelley A. Leedahl, an award-winning writer, of Wild Rose – “After completing Sharon Butala’s epic new novel Wild Rose, I closed the book and thought: This is why she’s on CanLit’s “A” list. If you’re in the mood for getting completely swept up in a female pioneer’s adventure–and this means fully empathizing with the young Québécois idealist, Sophie, as she sets out in 1884 for the West and the freedom it signifies–then buckle up, because Butala assuredly leads readers back in time to a landscape where “the sun [pours] itself over everything: horses, the hats of the men, the few women’s entangling skirts, the children’s round eager faces, the …already weathered false-fronted buildings, piles of all kinds of goods on the ground from walking plows to stained sacks … to the teams of horses, the train itself …”.

September 2015

Wild Rose included among the books on the Scotiabank Giller 2015 Crazy for Can Lit list…..
‘Every year, our Crazy for CanLit feature gives you the chance to sample and discuss the best books of the Canadian publishing season. All the books of the literary calendar are displayed and are eligible for the Scotiabank Giller Prize for that year. Any one of them could be entered to become that year’s winner! We often use the Crazy for CanLit collection as a platform for discussions … and more……’

September 26, 2015

Wild Rose is #1 on the Calgary Herald’s bestseller list. Calgary Herald Bestseller List

October 2015 – Alberta Views – JoAnn McCaig

Review of Wild Rose by Joann McCaig of Shelf Life Books in Alberta Views….’It’s about time for a new novel from Sharon Butala. And it’s long past time for a new novel in which the experience of homesteading on the prairie is seen from a woman’s point of view. In Wild Rose, Butala tells the story of one very determined young woman as she tries to find freedom and a new life in what in the 1880s was still known as the North West Territories…..Wild Rose is an old-fashioned novel of character, plot and setting, refreshingly devoid of irony, angst, world-weariness or cheap flash. Novels of the old West by such contemporary authors as Fred Stenson and Guy Vanderhaeghe have brought these days powerfully to life, but from a male perspective. With Wild Rose, Butala adds her woman’s voice to the prairie canon.’

 

October 2015 Wild Rose added to 49th Shelf List

Wlld Rose has been included on the 49th Shelf’s list, which is produced by the Association of Canadian Publishers together with the Canadian Publishers’ Council, and with funding from the Department of Canadian Heritage and the Ontario Media Development Corporation and a lead sponsorship from Amazon.ca.
The 49th Shelf has one purpose: to make it easier for readers to discover Canadian books. Canadian books in all genres, from bestselling authors to new talent, from publishers large and small, from all regions of the country.

October 2015

Wild Rose included in Susan Toy’s Reading Recommendations Blog Reading Recommendations

November 2015

Saskatoon Star Phoenix (and the Regina Leader Post) publish a review of Wild Rose …. After novels, short fiction, and meditations comes Sharon Butala’s 16th book, the novel Wild Rose. Butala, who now lives in Calgary, lived for years on a ranch outside Eastend, and this countryside is a very large part of the story. Wild Rose adds to a relatively long tradition of settler novels in the west, most of which, at least in the past, lauded the brave struggles of white pioneers to homestead the plains and turn this part of the world into a farming juggernaut. Butala, fortunately, knows which way the wind blows, and this blandly-titled novel has some modern surprises and is a good read, besides. Saskatoon Star Phoenix

FEBRUARY 2016

Calgary Herald Review by Catherine Ford…There is only one word appropriate for Sharon Butala’s latest book: Beautiful. Wild Rose is simply beautiful. No words of mine can do it justice because reading Wild Rose is a lock on your heart, a catch in your throat and best of all, a glimpse into the lives of our great-grandparents and every other immigrant to a wild and unforgiving land. The CPR may have “opened” the West, but it was those people who came to the ed of the line, or close to it, who took the promise of a new life and land and left everything and everybody they knew to be pioneers.
Calgary Herald

PAST WORK ⟩

Books (Memoir, Fiction, Nonfiction)
Upcoming Events
Wild Rose
The Girl in Saskatoon
Lilac Moon
Real Life
The Garden of Eden
The Perfection of the Morning
Wild Stone Heart
Fever
The Fourth Archangel
Luna
The Gates of the Sun
Country of the Heart
Upstream
Old Man On His Back
Coyotes Morning Cry
Queen of the Headaches
Harvest


PAST WORK ⟩

Plays
Billy Bock: An Entertainment - One act, an adaptation for stage of humourist and songwriter Billy Bock’s material. Directed by and with Gabe Prendergast as Billy Bock. Production March 5/94, Eastend, Sk.

Rodeo Life - Three acts, Commissioned by and produced at Twenty Fifth Street Theatre Centre in Saskatoon, Feb. 4-18/93. Direction, Tom Bentley-Fisher. With Sharon Bakker, Rob Roy, Karen Turner, Beata van Berkom, Carol Greyeyes. Published in 2005 by Playwrights’ Union of Canada and Theatre Saskatchewan, Theatre Saskatchewan Anthology, Write On.

The Element of Fire - Three acts, Produced by Pink Ink Theatre Productions, Vancouver, October 1989, 4 week run. Director, Sandhano Schultze. With Pat Armstrong, Ellie Harvie, Celine Lockhart and Sarah Rodgers. Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild Major Drama Award, 1989. (Judges, Judith Thompson and John Murrell.)
A Killing Frost - Written with Sean Hoy. One Act. Produced in workshop, Regina, Spring, 1988. Vancouver Fringe Festival, Fall 1988. Director, Donna Peerless, with Sean Hoy and Karen Austin. Victoria Fringe Festival, 1988. “Emerging Artists 1988” Festival, White Rock, B.C.

Natural Disasters - Two acts. Staged reading, Regina and Saskatoon, 1985. Medicine Hat College Drama Department, November 1985 (or ‘86?). Director, Bob Mumford, student cast. Saskatchewan Writers Guild Major Drama Award, 1985.

Sweet Time - Three-act pageant-play. Produced by the people of Eastend, Summers of 1984 and 1989. First production with Gordon Tootoosis. Director, Andy Tahn. Cast, people of Eastend.
Sharon can be reached at

SHARON BUTALA
Sharon is represented by Marilyn Biderman,
Transatlantic Literary Agency (TLA)

CONTACT MARILYN
Where I Live Now
“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.

Out of this hard-won new existence comes an astonishingly frank, compassionate and moving memoir that offers not only solace and hope but inspiration to those who endure profound loss.

Often called one of this country’s true visionaries, Sharon Butala shares her insights into the grieving process and reveals the small triumphs and funny moments that kept her going. Where I Live Now is profound in its understanding of the many homes women must build for themselves in a lifetime.

Simon & Schuster Canada
Wild Rose, Sharon’s most recent novel, published in September 2015, is of the earliest part of the settlement era on the prairies, about Sophie, a young Quebecoise mother who finds she has to make her own way in what was then decisively a man’s world. Wild Rose, an epic story of The West, now long gone, charts Sophie’s journey from underloved child in religion- bound rural Quebec, to headstrong young woman to exhausted homesteader to deserted bride and mother to independent businesswoman finding her way in a hostile, if beautiful, landscape. (Coteau Books)

Coteau Books
In 1961, a country singer named Johnny Cash chose a beautiful young woman named Alexandra Wiwcharuk to be his "Girl in Saskatoon" and sang to her in front of a hometown crowd. A few months later, Alex was found brutally murdered on the banks of the Saskatchewan River. Sharon Butala's high school friend Alex had dreamed of becoming a glamorous stewardess; she had been crowned a beauty queen in local pageants; she was a nurse. Her killing brought an entire city to a stop. Why was Alex's murder so haunting? And why did Butala return some forty years later to reconstruct Alex's life and search for answers?

Butala faces the horror of these long-ago events to create a lyrical portrait of a world where life appeared so much simpler, when young country girls like Alex came to the city and dreamed their dreams of love and marriage as life stretched before them. The Girl in Saskatoon is, at once, an in-depth investigation of an unsolved murder, a nostalgic coming-of-age story, an eloquent meditation on the nature of good and evil, and an affirmation of the true meaning of a life.

HarperCollinsPublishersLtd. - A Phyllis Bruce Book
ISBN: 9780002007207; ISBN-10: 0002007207
HarperCollins Canada
From the author of the much-loved The Perfection of the Morning comes a unique vision of the West.

Sharon Butala challenges stereotypes and myths, not just those held by Canadians from the East, but those held by Westeners themselves. From the pioneer past to party politics, from rural legends to urban realities, Butala blends her own experiences with the great themes of Western life.

z #1 National Bestseller
Winner of
THE SASKATCHEWAN NON-FICTION AWARD

HarperPerennial - A Phyllis Bruce Book
ISBN-10:0-00-639481-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-00-639481-5
Harper Perennial Canada
In this new collection of ten stories, Sharon Butala once again demonstrates why she ranks among our finest short story writers. Her unforgettable style - spare but intense, indelible in its drawing of character - brings these stories to life in quiet but powerful ways.

Real Life resonates with the same authenticity and strength that characterized her last award-winning story collection, Fever. Set in western Canada, familiar Butala territory, these stories of women in moments of crisis - a dying sister, a failing marriage, a love lost, a random act of violence that changes a life forever - are compelling and unsentimental. Yet there are threads of common experience that reach from story to story and create a web of universal experience: the pain of losing love and the sense of personal failure that accompanies it; the ways in which poverty can destroy the human spirit; the reality and demands of death; the joy that children can bring. Butala's women are scarred but resilient. They face what the future brings with both wisdom and hope, recognizing in other women and the men in their lives the challenge of finding and keeping happiness.

Critics have found in the writing of Sharon Butala a steady light that both uncovers and illuminates human experience. Real Life captures well the emotional risks that we must face as part of loving. What is real about these stories is Butala's unwavering faith in the ultimate goodness of the human heart.

HarperFlamingoCanada - A Phyllis Bruce Book
ISBN: 0-00-255402-x
HarperCollins Canada
Iris, a farmer's wife living comfortably near the small town of Chinook, finds her life suddenly out of control. Jolted out of her complacency by death, grieving for lost love, guilty over an aging mother, she sets out on a quest for self-understanding. If only she can find her niece Lannie, whom she once raised, perhaps she will be able to understand her troubling dreams, the mysterious ache in her heart. But does Lannie want to be found? Or is Iris the one who is really lost?

The Garden of Eden is brilliantly imagined novel of family disintegration and renewal written in the simple but powerful style that so endears her to her readers. Grounded in the prairie landscape that Butala has made very much her own, it is at the same time a universal story interweaving history, myth, dream, and vision. It explores with passion and insight the inextricable relationship between the land on which people live and their secret inner landscapes.

Sharon Butala's clear-eyed rendering of the lives of ordinary people, her profound respect for what the land can teach, and her remarkable ability to capture the inner life, make The Garden of Eden a novel of great richness and compassion.

The Garden of Eden is a sequel to her first novel Country of the Heart published in 1984.

HarperFlamingoCanada - A Phyllis Bruce Book
ISBN: 9780006485032
ISBN-10: 0006485030
HarperCollins Canada
In 1976, Sharon Butala left a promising academic career to marry a cattle rancher in southwest Saskatchewan. Overwhelmed by the isolation of her new life, she struggled to find a connection with the land that encircled her. What could she learn from ancient wisdom that would enable her to make the land her own? Would she ever find a place for herself in this new, selfsufficient community? Would she have the courage to translate her personal crisis into words on a page? In The Perfection of the Morning - at once a meditation on the world of nature and a personal exploration of the roots of creativity - Butala embarks on a spiritual journey, seeking to define herself as a woman and as a writer. Through history, dream, vision and the reality of everyday life, she creates a rich portrait of her outer landscape - the southwest corner of Saskatchewan near the Montana border - and her inner one, the world of artistic imagination.

Evocative and moving, remarkable in its honesty and insight, this book is a revelation of self and an affirmation of the healing power of Nature. Infused with the richness and clarity of theme that so characterizes Butala's writing.The Perfection of the Morning continues, ten years later, to echo in the mind and heart.

#1 National Bestseller
Winner of THE SPIRIT OF SASKATCHEWAN AWARD, and THE SASKATCHEWAN NON-FICTION AWARD
Finalist for: THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S AWARD

HarperCollinsPublishersLtd. - A Phyllis Bruce Book
ISBN-10: 0-00-639401-9
ISBN-13: 978-0-00-639401-3;
HarperCollins Canada
In a seemingly ordinary field on Sharon Butala's land in southwest Saskatchewan lie the secrets of the past. When she and her husband, Peter, decided to let the field return to its natural state, the wonders of the prairie landscape began to reveal themselves to her. Over a twenty-year period, as she walked this field, she tried to understand what lessons could be learned from its mysterious markings, its wildlife, grasses and plants, its massive rocks and boulders deposited there as the glaciers retreated. The field became a tabula rasa on which she could project her own dreams and imaginings about the landscape that has informed her writing and inspired her life.

Wild Stone Heart is the brilliant companion volume to The Perfection of the morning, a resonant and deeply moving exploration of both past and present. Butala travels back in time as she wanders the field; from the dinosaur period and the Ice Age, to the more recent life of the Amerindians and the arrival of the settlers. Her keen intelligence ranges over prehistory, natural history, Amerindian custom, the farming and ranching ways of life, and the politics of the West today. We discover with her the animals and plants that live in the field, the mysterious stone remnants of the nomadic way of life, the ghosts and visions that come to her in her wanderings. Wild Stone Heart is also filled with touches of Butala's wry humour as she watches Nikon-laden tourists pouring into the tiny town of Eastend in the wake of the discovery of a T-Rex skeleton. It captures brilliantly the collision of past and present and one woman's search for her own place in the world.

HarperFlamingoCanada - A Phyllis Bruce Book
First HarperFlamingo ed.ISBN: 0-00-255397-x
First HarperPerennial Canada ed.ISBN: 0-00-639129-x
Paperback ISBN: 9780006391296; ISBN-10: 000639129X;
HarperCollins Canada
Without excessive show or ornament,Sharon Butala has created a collection of highly charged, emotional stories that delve into the secret lives of men and women. As Butala skillfully peels back her characters' defenses, she compels the reader into a world of vulnerability, revealing both strengths and frailties of the human spirit. This now classic work is infused with an intensity that often catches its readers off-guard, making Fever an honest and powerful experience.

HarperPerennialCanada - A Phyllis Bruce Book
ISBN: 9780006391821; ISBN-10: 0006391826
HarperCollins Canada
In the prairie town of Ordeal, on the eve of the millenium, members of the dwindling farming community brace for a rally planned to coincide with the provincial premier's visit. Broken by years of drought and government indifference, this is their last-ditch effort to save what's left of their town and way of life.

But strange and fantastical visitations - far more momentous than that of the premier - are already taking place, drifting like wisps of fog in and among the townspeople.

As the community wages its mortal struggle for survival, history slips its moorings, emerging to signal the imminence and inevitability of change, and an end to life as we know it.

The Fourth Archangel is Sharon Butala's deeply moving and mournful elegy to a land and a way of living that have all but disappeared. Yet she brings both to vibrant, memorable life giving strong and enduring voice to our eternal, passionate struggle to live with the land, to be true to it and to love it.

The Fourth Archangel is the third of a loosely-connected trilogy about rural life. The first is The Gates of the Sun, and the second is Luna. This one is located mostly in the town and is set in what was then the future - the year 2000.

HarperCollinsPublishersLtd.
ISBN: 0-00-223757-1
Trade Paperback ISBN 0-00-647404-7
Selena knows the meaning of sacrifice. After twenty years on her husband Kent's Saskatchewan ranch, the rhytms of children, family and tradition are bred in her bones.

The women around Selena all contend with the conventions that surround them: her aunt Rhea endures change with an almost mystic wisdom, her married sister Diane harbours a lingering wish for a different life in the city, and Phoebe, Selena's daughter, faces a choice that might force them all to reconsider the beliefs they have always known.

Infused with Sharon Butala's singular ability to communicate the textures of rural life, Luna is a remarkable and compassionate novel that moves beyond the life of a prairie woman to capture what it means to be female in the modern world.

Luna is the second of a loosely-connected trilogy of novels about rural life. This one is the women's story and takes place in what was then the present.

Luna is constructed as a modern version of the Greek women's mysteries.

HarperPerennialCanada - ISBN-10: 0-00-648540-5 .. ISBN-13: 978-0-00-648540-5
HarperCollins Canada
AuthorTracker
Outlaw, rancher, lover, father ----- this powerful portrait of a fiercely independent cowboy brings alive the vastness of the prairie life.

The Gates of the Sun is the first of a loosely-connected trilogy of novels about rural life. This one is the male story, the settlement story and takes place in the past.

HarperCollinsPublishersLtd.
HarperPerennial
ISBN-10: 0006475353
ISBN-13: 978-0006475354
Nominated for a Books in Canada First Novel Award, this resonant novel of love and loss explores the texture of rural family life:

Iris, seemingly happily married to Barney, a rancher-turned-farmer, has surprisingly fallen in love with Jake, an old man who still radiates the power of the legendary cowboy he once was; Lannie, Iris's troubled niece, judges Iris for her weakness nearly as harshly as she judges herself.

Set in a beautifully realized prairie landscape, and presenting the heroines of Butala's acclaimed novel The Garden of Eden for the first time, this novel rings with passion and authenticity.

HarperCollinsPublishersLtd.
HarperPerennial - A Phyllis Bruce Book
ISBN-10: 0-00-648158-z
HarperCollins Canada
One night, in the first year of their marriage, Doug suddenly turned to Chloe and said, "I don't know what would have happened to me without you. You brought my life in from chaos." Four years later, chaos threatens to engulf Chloe herself when she realizes that her husband is in love with another woman.

Rather than join Doug on an academic sojourn in Scotland and try to win back his love, she returns to Saskatchewan, the land of her French- and Anglo-Canadian ancestors.

Ironically, Chloe's avoidance of the present forces a confrontation with the past. Amid the deeply riven conflicts of language and culture, faced with ancient hostilities and personal loss, Chloe explores the unfamiliar terrain of her own psyche, and finds an independence she has never known.

HarperCollinsPublishersLtd.
HarperPerennial - A Phyllis Bruce Book
ISBN: 0-00648113-2
HarperCollins Canada
Text by: SHARON BUTALA
Photography by: COURTNEY MILNE

The Old Man On His Back Prairie and Heritage Conservation Area (OMB) is a 13,OOO-acre preserve established by the Nature Conservancy in cooperation with a number of partners, among them the land donors, Peter and Sharon Butala. In this beautiful pictorial tribute to the OMB, Sharon Butala and Courtney Milne combine their talents to explore the grasslands that are the essence of their home province.

Sharon Butala's insightful narrative not only describes her personal landscape, a landscape that her many readers delight in, she considers the intersection of the past and the present on the OMB. She takes us back to prehistory, when glaciers scraped the soil from the land, and describes the various ways of life that have tried to take root: from Aboriginal hunters and gatherers to ranchers, settlers, and today's farmers. With her far-ranging vision and questioning mind, she raises important and challenging questions about the meaning and value of land. Photographer Courtney Milne roamed the hills of the OMB in all seasons. His stunning colour photographs of the OMB capture its delicacy, its subtle shadings and its drama: from misty morning hills to fiery sunsets, from lightning storms to delicate spring flowers. Together, Butala and Milne have created a portrait of the natural world that is both reflective and inspirational.

The OMB is the Nature Conservancy of Canada's flagship grassland project and, thanks to its wise stewardship, this area will be preserved for all Canadians. Old Man On His Back captures the essence of a priceless part of our country. This happy blend of image and text will delight all those who care about our natural heritage.

HarperCollinsPublishersLtd. - A Phyllis Bruce Book
ISBN: 0-00-200085-7
HarperCollins Canada
Coyote's Morning Cry is a collection of brilliantly simple, yet profound meditations that explore our need to understand and be true to ourselves. In her deeply moving The Perfection of the Morning Butala began a process of self-awareness that took readers into her daily life as a rancher's wife and struggling writer in southwest Saskatchewan. Now, in Coyote's Morning Cry, she revisits that familiar landscape and journeys beyond it, searching for meaning not only through the natural world but through the world of dream and vision.

These short meditations offer new meaning to ordinary experience and range over areas that inform all of Butala's work as a writer: the power of Nature to heal and transform, the wisdom of dreams, the deceptions of success, the changing nature of love.

Written with Sharon Butala's characteristic clear eye and scrupulous honesty, Coyote's Morning Cry will inspire, challenge and comfort people of all ages.

HarperCollinsPublishersLtd.
ISBN: 0-00-255430-5
HarperCollins Canada
SHARON BUTALA first attracted national attention in Oberon's short story collection Comming Attractions.

She followed this with Country of the Heart, a finalist for the Books in Canada First Novel Award for 1984. In QUEEN of the HEADACHES, Butala returns to short fiction with this bold and striking collection. The people in these stories are familiar - the friends, neighbours, relatives of our everyday life. Sharon Butala reminds us that each is remarkable and unique.

Nominated for the 1985 Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction

This is the second book in her first collecdtion of short stories. Currently out of print, rights reverted to the author.

ISBN: 0-919926-48-7
Publisher: Coteau Books
Text by: SHARON BUTALA
Photography by: TODD KOROL

Harvest follows one family, Henry and Frieda Peters and their children, who farm near Hanley, Saskatchewan.

The outstanding photographs by Todd Korol record one harvest on the Peters's farm, from the start-up to the final, satisfying days of loading the bins and seeing the fields of stubble.

The popular essay by awardwinning writer Sharon Butala looks at the significance of the harvest throughout history and at the role of the family farm as a vital element of the culture, economics, and history of the Canadian prairies.

Together, the photographs and essay are a beautiful and lasting tribute to the prairie harvest, the powers of nature, and the hardworking people who farm the land.

Fifth House Publishers.
ISBN-10: 0920079954
ISBN-13: 9780920079959