Jacob's Wound: A Search for the Spirit of Wildness

By Trevor Herriot

The award-winning author of River in a Dry Land explores the Nature that we – and our religions – sprang from

The Genesis story of Jacob, the patriarch of the Judeo-Christian tradition, wrestling with a spirit has been interpreted in a multitude of ways, but never more persuasively than by Trevor Herriot in Jacob’s Wound. He sees it as a struggle between Jacob and his wilder twin brother, Esau, whose birthright Jacob has swindled. The central idea of Herriot’s brilliantly written, observant, and groundbreaking book is the wound that Jacob, the farmer, the civilized man, suffered in vanquishing Esau, the hunter, the primitive man. And the central question posed is whether we, as Jacob did with Esau, can eventually reconcile with the wildness we conquered and have been estranged from for so long.

As if ambling through the author’s beloved Qu’Appelle Valley in Saskatchewan, Jacob’s Wound takes readers on an untrodden path through history, memoir, science, and theology. Along the way, Herriot tells us stories of the past and present that illuminate what we once were and what we have become. It’s a measured journey motivated by curiosity rather than by destination, and at every turn there is insight and beautiful writing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Mar 4, 2011
• ISBN: 9781551994376

Trevor Herriot

TREVOR HERRIOT is a grassland conservationist and naturalist who writes about human and natural history on the northern Great Plains. His last book, Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds was a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year and one of Quill & Quire's 15 Books That Mattered Most in 2009, and it was shortlisted for the Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-fiction and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing (Nonfiction). His first book, River in a Dry Land: a Prairie Passage (2000), received several national awards and a nomination for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-fiction. His second book, Jacob’s Wound: a Search for the Spirit of Wildness (2004), was nominated for several awards, including a short-listing for the Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction. Trevor's writing has appeared in The Globe and Mail and Canadian Geographic, as well as in several anthologies. He has written two radio documentaries for CBC's Ideas and is a regular guest on CBC Radio Saskatchewan’s Blue Sky. He and his wife, Karen, have four children and live in Regina.