Sign-In
Cart
How to Breathe Water
Paperback
Biographies GeneralLiterary FiguresAging & Elder Care
Publisher Price: $24.95
ISBN13: 9781990601965
Publisher: FreeHand Books
Published: Sep 1 2025
Pages: 288
Weight: 0.90
Height: 0.80 Width: 5.50 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
A road trip through the prairies prompts acclaimed writer Sharon Butala to unearth the stories of the natural world around her, and at the same time revisit her own personal histories.
After an isolating and demoralizing year during the COVID-19 pandemic, a friend invites Sharon Butala to join her on a road trip - together they will drive the thirteen hundred kilometers from Calgary to Winnipeg, stopping as they please along the way. Sharon is delighted for a change of scenery, and is keen to see again some of the locations that have been significant to her life on the prairies, like the ranch she lived on for thirty-three years with her husband before his death.
But along the way, the sites they visit - landmarks of Indigenous history, sites where her ancestors struggled to eke out a living - prompt Sharon to unearth her own personal history. She sifts through memories of a difficult childhood, of traumas deeply buried, of relationships both complicated and gratifying. Taking stock of the people and places who are no longer with us brings her to the ultimate confrontation - with mortality - which she explores with uncommon wisdom and frankness.
Her most intimate work to date, Sharon Butala's How to Breathe Water is a love letter to the lands and waters of the prairies and a stirring exploration of the places and moments that mark and mold our lives.
Also in
Literary Figures
Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times
Sachs, Aaron
Hardcover
Hidden Hemingway: Inside the Ernest Hemingway Archives of Oak Park
Cirino, Mark
Elder
Vetch, Aaron
Hardcover
Go Deep and Take Plenty of Root: A Prairie-Norwegian Father, Rebellion in Minneapolis, Basement Zen, Growing Up, Growing Tender
Storlie, Erik Fraser
Paperback
Darkness Becomes Bright: On the Brief Life and Immortal Art of Edgar Allan Poe
Ogden, Emily
Hardcover
Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival
Greenblatt, Stephen
Hardcover
Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend
Romney, Rebecca
Paperback
Travels with Charley in Search of America: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Steinbeck, John
Paperback
Plot Twist: Life, Craft, and the Messy First Draft: A Memoir on Writing (Large Print Edition)
Coben, Harlan
Paperback
Somewhere, a Boy and a Bear: A. A. Milne and the Creation of Winnie-The-Pooh
Brandreth, Gyles
Hardcover
The Village on the Edge of the World: Writing and Surviving in Ceausescu's Romania
Müller, Herta
Hardcover
Miss Greene's Secret: Based on the True Story of the Black Librarian Who Shaped the Morgan Library
Antona, Nicolas
Hardcover
The War for Middle-Earth: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933-1945
Loconte, Joseph
Hardcover
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
Winchester, Simon
Paperback
The Agatha Christie Cure: What Reading the Queen of Crime Taught Me about Life
Rentzenbrink, Cathy
Hardcover
String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis: A Library of America Special Publication
Wallace, David Foster
Hardcover
Eleven Days: The Fascinating True Account of Agatha Christie's Mysterious Disappearance
Thompson, Laura
Hardcover
Mon Cher Amour: The Love Letters of Albert Camus and Maria Casares, 1944-1959
Camus, Albert
Hardcover
The Apostle of Tennessee: The Indefatigable Life and Ministry of Father Aloysius Orengo
Pagetta, Joe
Paperback
Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway's Masterpiece the Sun Also Rises
Blume, Lesley M. M.
Paperback
Henry and June: From a Journal of Love: The Unexpurgated Diary (1931-1932) of Anais Nin
Nin, Anaïs
Paperback