Description

pp. 411, black and white photographs throughout, notes, index. Book in as new condition. “When W.O. Mitchell died in February 1998, government buildings across Canada flew their flags at half-mast for a man celebrated and mourned as the nation’s best-loved writer. It was not just the remarkable body of work that was remembered, it was also the man himself. He was loquacious, generous, humorous, and courageous. He was known as an inspiring teacher of creative writing, as the author of the comic and touching ‘Jake and the Kid’ stories, as a talented performer of his own work, and as the creator of a dozen novels including the Canadian classic, ‘Who Has Seen the Wind.’ In all his work, W.O. Mitchell evoked themes and images that have become part of Canada’s common iconography. He wrote brilliantly of the alternating harshness and sweetness of life on the prairie, and of the dark undercurrents that stirred beneath the proper veneer of small-town life. Perhaps most memorably, he portrayed with uncanny precision a child’s view of the world around him. In this volume, Barbara and Ormond Mitchell – W.O.’s daughter-in-law and oldest son – describe the writer’s early years, from his childhood in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, through his adventures in the Great Depression, to his settling in High River, Alberta. The book concludes on a triumphant note, with W.O.’s first great literary success, the publication in 1947 of ‘Who Has Seen the Wind.'”