{"title":"Rudy Wiebe","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"temptations-of-big-bear-book-rudy-wiebe-9780771034541","title":"The Temptations of Big Bear","description":"“What can that mean, I and my family will have a ‘reserve of one square mile’?”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e So asks Big Bear of Governor Morris, come to impose a square treaty on the round, buffalo-covered world of the Plains Cree. As the buffalo vanish and the tension builds to the second Riel Rebellion, Big Bear alone of the prairie chiefs keeps up pressure for a better treaty by refusing to choose a reserve. He argues, “If any man has the right to put a rope around another man’s neck, some day someone will get choked.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e It is Big Bear’s story – and the story of Wandering Spirit, of Kitty McLean and John McDougall–that is told in this novel with rare and penetrating power. Permeated with a sense of place and time, this eagerly awaited work by Rudy Wiebe reflects the author’s sensitivity to the Canadian prairies, their history, the minds and hearts of their diverse people.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Exploring Big Bear’s isolated struggle, Wiebe has encompassed in one creative sweep not only his hero’s struggle for integrity, but the whole range and richness of the Plains culture. Here is the giant circle of the prairie horizon, and the joy, the sorrow, the pain and the triumph and the violence of unconquerable human beings faced with destruction.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49534051385617,"sku":"GOR012978588","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51682250490129,"sku":"GOR007889456","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0771034547.jpg?v=1751361775"},{"product_id":"peace-shall-destroy-many-book-rudy-wiebe-9780676973426","title":"Peace Shall Destroy Many","description":"In 1944, as war rages across Europe and Asia, famine, violence and fear are commonplace. But life appears tranquil in the isolated farming settlement of Wapiti in northern Saskatchewan, where the Mennonite community continues the agricultural lifestyle their ancestors have practised for centuries. Their Christian values of peace and love lead them to oppose war and military service, so they are hardly affected by the war - except for the fact that they are reaping the rewards of selling their increasingly valuable crops and livestock. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThom Wiens, a young farmer and earnest Christian, begins to ask questions. How can they claim to oppose the war when their livestock become meat to sustain soldiers? How can they enjoy this free country but rely on others to fight to preserve that freedom? Within the community, conflicts and broken relationships threaten the peace, as the Mennonite tradition of close community life manifests itself as racism toward their half-breed neighbours, and aspirations of holiness turn into condemnation of others. Perhaps the greatest hope for the future lies with children such as Hal Wiens, whose friendship with the M tis children and appreciation of the natural environment offer a positive vision of people living at peace with themselves and others. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWiebe's groundbreaking first novel aroused great controversy among Mennonite communities when it was first published in 1962. Wiebe explains, I guess it was a kind of bombshell because it was the first realistic novel ever written about Mennonites in western Canada. A lot of people had no clue how to read it. They got angry. I was talking from the inside and exposing things that shouldn't be exposed. At the same time, other reviewers were unsure how to react to Wiebe's explicitly religious themes, a view which Wiebe found absurd. There are many, many people who feel that religious experience is the most vital thing that happens to them in their lives, and how many of these people actually ever get explored in modern novels? \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe concept of peace is an important theme in Wiebe's first three books. The attempt to live non-violently, one of the basic tenets of the Mennonite faith as taught by the sixteenth-century spiritual leader Menno Simons, is what has caused the Mennonites the most difficulty in their relationship with everybody, forcing them to move again and again. The theme of peace versus passivity is further explored in The Blue Mountains of China, where inner peace, a state of being, is contrasted with the earthly desire for a place of public order and tranquility where the church is there for a few hours a Sunday and maybe a committee meeting during the week to keep our fire escape polished, as Thom, the protagonist puts it.. Wiebe has said, To be an Anabaptist is to be a radical follower of the person of Jesus Christ . . . and Jesus Christ had no use for the social and political structures of his day; he came to supplant them. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eWhile \u003ci\u003ePeace Shall Destroy Many\u003c\/i\u003e takes place in a Mennonite community, its elements are universal, delineating the way young idealism rebels against staid tradition, as a son clashes with his father. In the face of violent confrontations between beliefs all over the world, the novel remains as compelling now as it was nearly forty years ago.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49545655812369,"sku":"CIN0676973426G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50360478957841,"sku":"CIN0676973426A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52819481428241,"sku":"CIN0676973426VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0676973426.jpg?v=1751105527"},{"product_id":"temptations-of-big-bear-book-rudy-wiebe-9780804010290","title":"The Temptations of Big Bear","description":"Rudy Wiebe's The Temptations of Big Bear is an epic of the Canadian West. As the buffalo-based food supply vanishes, Big Bear leads his Plains Cree nation across the prairie in search of a means of retaining the way of life quickly being lost-a life his people have lived for thousands of years. Against the onslaught of the White Queen's representatives, Big Bear resists pressure to cede the ancestral right to the land of his hungry but free people in exchange for temporary nourishment and a reserve. In this award-winning novel, Rudy Wiebe brings alive the heroism and dignity of Big Bear's fierce struggle for justice that tore apart the Cree community and his own family. The Temptations of Big Bear is a beautifully written and moving novel about a tumultuous period in the history of the West.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49628890267921,"sku":"GOR008936279","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0804010293.jpg?v=1751170282"},{"product_id":"hidden-buffalo-book-rudy-wiebe-9780889952850","title":"Hidden Buffalo","description":"In this lyrical coming-of-age story, Governor General's Award-winner \u003cb\u003eRudy Wiebe\u003c\/b\u003e captures the anxiety of a boy who feels powerless to help his people, but who must speak his dreams if they are to survive. Steeped in aboriginal myth and lore, \u003ci\u003eHidden Buffalo\u003c\/i\u003e is also the tale of how a whole tribe can turn its gaze from the horizon to see to the wisdom of a child. \u003cp\u003eOriginal paintings by noted Cree artist \u003cb\u003eMichael Lonechild\u003c\/b\u003e capture the colorful palette of the prairie landscape in autumn and the rich detail of Cree life in the late nineteenth century.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49798949601553,"sku":"CIN088995285XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/088995285X.jpg?v=1750747121"},{"product_id":"where-the-truth-lies-book-rudy-wiebe-9781926455754","title":"Where the Truth Lies","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe problem with writer longevity can be a complicating, even contradictory oeuvre. Hopefully.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhere The Truth Lies\u003c\/i\u003e collects forty years of essays and speeches that Rudy Wiebe crafted over his many years as an author. In this illuminating and wide-ranging selection, Wiebe provides a look behind the curtain, revealing his thought processes as he worked on many of his great books. Throughout this selection, he dissects controversies that arose after publication of his early novels, meditates on words and their inherent power, explores the great Canadian North and the Canadian body politic, reckons with his family history and Mennonite faith, all while providing an engaging and enlightening commentary. \u003ci\u003eWhere The Truth Lies\u003c\/i\u003e is a vital compilation of a writing life.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49897413673233,"sku":"CIN1926455754G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1926455754.jpg?v=1751093419"},{"product_id":"big-bear-book-rudy-wiebe-9780670067862","title":"Big Bear","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50358712860945,"sku":"CIN0670067865G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0670067865.jpg?v=1750977561"},{"product_id":"peace-shall-destroy-many-book-rudy-wiebe-9780771091827","title":"Peace Shall Destroy Many","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50359873831185,"sku":"CIN0771091826G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53373615833361,"sku":"CIN0771091826VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0771091826.jpg?v=1751075598"},{"product_id":"chinook-christmas-book-rudy-wiebe-9780889950863","title":"Chinook Christmas","description":"\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Christmas in the Prairies means snow and blizzards and bitterly cold winds. But what happens when a warm Chinook wind blows like an unexpected gift down from the Rocky Mountains, turning December into April in the blink of a child's eye? What happens when the Chinook promises a temporary magic? What happens is the people of a small prairie town abandon old habits and emerge momentarily from the grip of the harsh cold to embrace this wonder. \u003cp\u003eSmack in the middle of what used to be winter, nine-year old Eric grabs his bike and sails crazily through a maze of paths and puddles that shouldn't be there at all. And on this special Christmas Eve, Eric and his sister Anni marvel at the surprise of a frozen landscape melted into vivid colours and fresh smells. And when they return home from church, they discover an anonymous gift on their doorstep. Who could have left this mysterious treat? As the Chinook whispers in his ears, Eric is certain he knows the answer.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50365838131473,"sku":"CIN0889950865G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0889950865.jpg?v=1750980629"},{"product_id":"of-this-earth-book-rudy-wiebe-9781561486021","title":"of this earth","description":"Rudy Wiebe has written award-winning fiction for decades. He is recognized as one of Canada's finest literary treasures. Twice he has received Canada's most prestigious prize for fiction writing: The Governor-General's Award (equivalent to the Pulitzer Prize for fiction). Now comes new recognition for Wiebe's nonfiction writing. His recently released childhood memoir, Of This Earth: A Mennonite Boyhood in the Boreal Forest, has won the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Nonfiction (considered to be the country's most prestigious literary nonfiction prize). The book holds Rudy's memoirs of growing up through age 12. His immigrant family cut a farm out of stony bushland in remote Saskatchewan. They hand-dug their well, climbed a ladder to their beds under the rafters, farmed with horses, and traveled by sleigh on the frontier. Stories and singing and food from their native Ukraine and Poland held them and filled their bodies and souls. Of This Earth is written with spare and eloquent prose, say the jurors who chose the book for the Charles Taylor Prize. Wiebe conveys the riches of a hardscrabble inheritance; a love of words, reading and music, a sustaining yet unsentimental faith, and a bond with the natural world, all of which have provided a compass for his writing life. One of the Taylor-Prize jurors reflected, Rudy's book haunts you; it stays with you.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50382737899793,"sku":"CIN1561486027G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52766455726353,"sku":"CIN1561486027VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1561486027.jpg?v=1751212968"},{"product_id":"sweeter-than-all-the-world-book-rudy-wiebe-9780676973402","title":"Sweeter Than All the World","description":"Rudy Wiebe's latest novel is at once an enthralling saga of the Mennonite people and one man's emotional voyage into his heritage and his own self-discovery. Ambitious in its historical sweep, tender and humane, \u003cb\u003eSweeter Than All the World\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003etakes us on an extraordinary odyssey never before fully related in a contemporary novel. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe novel tells the story of the Mennonite people from the early days of persecution in sixteenth-century Netherlands, and follows their emigration to Danzig, London, Russia, and the Americas, through the horrors of World War II, to settlement in Paraguay and Canada. It is told episodically in a double-stranded narrative. The first strand consists of different voices of historical figures. The other narrative voice is that of Adam Wiebe, born in Saskatchewan in 1935, whom we encounter at telling stages of his life: as a small boy playing in the bush, as a student hunting caribou a week before his wedding, and as a middle-aged man carefully negotiating a temporary separation from his wife. As Adam faces the collapse of his marriage and the disappearance of his daughter, he becomes obsessed with understanding his ancestral past. Wiebe meshes the history of a people with the story of a modern family, laying bare the complexities of desire and family love, religious faith and human frailty. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThe past comes brilliantly alive, beginning with the horrors of the Reformation, when Weynken Claes Wybe is burned at the stake for heretical views on Communion. We are caught up in the great events of each century, as we follow in the footsteps of Adam's forebears: the genius engineer who invented the cable-car system; the artist Enoch Seeman, who found acclamation at the royal court in London after having been forbidden to paint by the Elders; Anna, who endures the great wagon trek across the Volga in 1860, leaving behind her hopes of marriage so that her brothers will escape conscription in the Prussian army; and Elizabeth Katerina, caught in the Red Army's advance into Germany when rape and pillage are the rewards given to soldiers. The title of the novel, taken from a hymn, reflects the beauty and sorrow of these stories of courage. In a startling act of invention, \u003cb\u003eSweeter Than All the World \u003c\/b\u003esets one man's quest for family and love against centuries of turmoil. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eRudy Wiebe first wrote of Mennonite resettlement in his 1970 epic novel \u003cb\u003eThe Blue Mountains of China\u003c\/b\u003e. Since then, much of his work has focused on re-imagining the history of the Canadian Northwest. In \u003cb\u003eSweeter Than All the World\u003c\/b\u003e, as in many of his most acclaimed novels, Wiebe has sought out real historical characters to tell an extraordinary story. William Keith, a University of Toronto professor and author of a book about Wiebe, writes: Wiebe has a knack for divining wells of human feeling in historical sources. Here, all the main characters share his name, and the history is one to which he belongs. Moreover, alongside those flashbacks into history is revealed an utterly compelling contemporary story of a man whose background is not totally unlike the author's own. Wiebe sets his narrative against his two favourite backdrops: the northern Alberta landscape, and the shared memories of the Mennonite people. \u003cb\u003eSweeter Than All the World\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eis a compassionate, erudite and stimulating work of fiction that shares the deep-rooted concerns of all of Wiebe's work: how to make history live in our imagination, and how we can best live our lives.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50430830182673,"sku":"CIN067697340XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50431132172561,"sku":"CIN067697340XVG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/067697340X.jpg?v=1751327175"},{"product_id":"stolen-life-book-rudy-wiebe-9780804010306","title":"Stolen Life","description":"The powerful, major book, acclaimed across Canada, from the great-great-granddaughter of Chief Big Bear and by Rudy Wiebe, twice winner of the Governor General's Award for Fiction. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThis is a story about justice, and terrible injustices, a story about a murder, and a courtroom drama as compelling as any thriller as it unravels the events that put Yvonne Johnson behind bars for life, first in Kingston's Federal Prison for Women until the riot that closed it, and later in the Okimaw Ochi Healing Lodge in the Cypress Hills. But above all it is the unforgettable true story of the life of a Native woman who has decided to speak out and break the silence, written with the redeeming compassion that marks all Rudy Wiebe's writing, and informed throughout by Yvonne Johnson's own intelligence and poetic eloquence. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHow the great-great-granddaughter of Big Bear reached out to the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Temptations of Big Bear\u003c\/i\u003e to help her tell her story is itself an extraordinary tale. The co-authorship between one of Canada's foremost writers and the only Native woman in Canada serving life imprisonment for murder produced a deeply moving, raw and honest book that speaks to all of us, and gives us new insight into the society we live in, while offering a deeply moving affirmation of spiritual healing. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eStolen Life\u003c\/i\u003e is a raw, honest, and beautifully written account of the troubled society we live in, and a deeply moving affirmation of spiritual healing.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50665806233873,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50665809215761,"sku":"CIN0804010307VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0804010307.jpg?v=1751011426"},{"product_id":"temptations-of-big-bear-book-rudy-wiebe-9780771092220","title":"The Temptations of Big Bear","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50980634263825,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50980635246865,"sku":"GOR011716124","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0771092229.jpg?v=1750786187"},{"product_id":"discovery-of-strangers-book-rudy-wiebe-9780394280509","title":"A Discovery of Strangers","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51328613351697,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51328616333585,"sku":"CIN0394280504G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52460645286161,"sku":"CIN0394280504VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0394280504.jpg?v=1750696797"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-rudy-wiebe.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}