We’re continuing the Canadian literature here, and there will be others to come, as I get around to writing about the books I read on my holiday to Calgary and Vancouver. Up today is the first book that the booksellers in Pages, Books in Calgary recommended when I said “I’d like to read books by Canadians, about Canada, that I wouldn’t be able to get easily in the UK.” I don’t know how much of a struggle it would be to find this in the UK, but I’m really glad they put Prairie Edge (2024) by Conor Kerr into my hands – I thought it was excellent. Even better, it was set in Alberta (the province I was staying in), and even mentioned in passing one or two of the places I visited in Calgary.
And it’s all about releasing bison into downtown Edmonton.
After a brief prologue from inhabitants of the district in the 1870s, we are straight into the action from Ezzy’s point of view. Here’s the first paragraph of his first chapter:
Around two in the morning, Grey dropped me off at an outskirt suburb of Edmonton. The kind where there were no numbers to tell you where you were on the grid, just the name of a landscape feature like Rolling Meadows, followed by a Blvd., Way, Point, Lane. I assumed that rich people loved not having numbers in their addresses. Why else would you live out here? Grey took off down the block in her beat-up Honda Cr-v. I watched the taillights until they disappeared around a suburb bend. Rich people also loved curves in the road.
Ezzy and his cousin Grey are Métis, a First Nations group that has lived in the area for many years, but has faced considerable historical discrimination and persecution. Nor is it solely in the past – their Métis identity still exposes them to these things, be it suspicion from the police, inescapable forms of poverty, or limits to their educational and career prospects.
Grey is passionate about these things. She lives to protest injustice – against Métis, against the environment, against animals. Along the way, she often joins with other protestors, but she also has well-worn disdain for the sort of wealthy white person who can protest as a hobby before they move on to their secure futures. Ezzy also sees this injustice, but he has less hope for change in the world – his world, or the whole world. His disaffection is sometimes a wedge between the two of them. But it is understandable.
I felt like most of my life so far had been waiting. When I was a kid, I waited for someone to adopt me. When I turned twelve and realized that was never going to happen, I waited until I aged out of foster families. After that, group homes. Then I went out on my own, and I waited for something, anything, to happen to give me direction or purpose. Floating through life was fine, but I felt like there must be something missing. What motivated people to try to do something different than the generations before them? I couldn’t grasp it. All I knew was survival mode. If there was food, eat it as quick as possible before someone took it from you. If there were drugs or booze, do them all before someone else could. If there was money, spend it now, or else it’d just be whittled away. Survive. Survive. Survive. No purpose, no direction, nothing – just waiting for that moment to happen.
He spends time in jail, during which Grey and he didn’t communicate at all – but they reunite when he comes out, having been close as children. She has had a different path, going to university, but they are still able to bond over their feelings of rejection from so many parts of society. Grey’s stubborn idealism and Ezzy’s shrugging nihilism clash but somehow they are a unit. One person who doesn’t reject them is Auntie May, who takes Ezzy in, and is very much the more centre of this book. A beacon of possible hope in the midst of the petty crime, joyriding and empty future that define Ezzy’s current life.
So, releasing the bison! This is an act of defiance by the two: Grey is trying to make a point about environmentalism and the reclaiming of urban land, while you feel like Ezzy just finds some peace in destruction. Between them, they manage to steal bison from someone’s land and transport them to the city, leaving them roaming and quickly scarpering themselves. It becomes a local mystery on the news – and a wider mystery, when copycat bison-releasings happen.
It’s such a brilliant image for a novel, and also makes a great way of marketing the book to make it sound fascinating: “This is the novel about bison released in downtown Edmonton.” I loved the idea, but the novel is far more than a cleverly constructed set piece. It’s such an interesting interplay of characters, entirely convincing – and more layers are added when, after a while, we switch to Grey’s perspective. She thinks more poetically, perhaps, and certainly with more decision.
There is plenty of darkness in the novel, including attempted sexual assault, murder, and drug taking. But it didn’t feel gratuitous, because it is anchored by the novel being chiefly about two fascinating characters. There was the odd page or two of viscera that I skimmed past, but mostly I really loved spending time with Kerr’s writing, his intriguing slant on modern Canadian life, and the vivid creations of Grey and Ezzy – deeply flawed, and hurt, people I couldn’t help rooting for.