Preview
FRED STENSON
WordFest: Banff-Calgary International Writers Festival
Thursday, October 16
Nickle Arts Museum (U of C)
Friday, October 17
Banff Book and Art Den
It’s been several days since I finished reading Fred Stenson’s Lightning, a brilliant novel about the men who rode tough and played hard while moving thousands of American cattle north to Alberta during the 1880s.
The treks were arduous – prone to sudden stampedes, flooded rivers, Indian raids and the frailties of those working the herds. Little was predictable – the cattle, the horses, the weather or a person’s character. Like lightning, anything could strike at any time, churning a day’s work into a frenzied storm. Indeed, the events and characters in Stenson’s book are stitched together by a fork of lighting – electrified, random and lit against a backdrop silhouetting the complex foothills terrain.
Though Stenson’s book now sits closed on my desk, the dust from pounding horse hooves is still rising from its pages, the words still vibrating with the call of baritone bulls.
Through such fictional characters as Texas cowboy Doc Windham, his lover and billiards queen Pearly, leather-tough partners Dog Eye and Lippy, and a champion horse called Louie, Stenson tells the story of the great Canadian cattle drives to the Cochrane Ranch – until now a part of Western Canadian history ignored by fiction writers, with little detail provided by non-fiction documents.
American writers, such as Larry McMurtry in his classic western novel Lonesome Dove, have documented the drives, but those tales expose little about what happened once the herds crossed into Canada.
"At first, I got excited when researching the Cochrane Ranch because there were about 25 different sources – but they all said exactly the same thing," says Stenson. As a result, there is more fiction in Lightning than in The Trade, Stenson’s last novel (a Giller Prize finalist), which tells the story of the Canadian fur trade.
While Stenson finds historical fiction a liberating genre, he knows there are historians and old-timers who may challenge aspects of his story. "I had to fictionalize the route, so I fear someone out there may get after me," he says with a laugh.
Nonetheless, Stenson believes his work serves a purpose, filling in the gaps found in historical records. He travelled to Virginia City, absorbing the mood of the old streets and the social behaviour of that time. "I wanted to present the West differently from the more stereotypic views. People bowled and played billiards. I bet nobody knows that," he says. "I don’t set out to change the facts. In fact, I rely on them – I just fill in the gaps, in a plausible way."
What makes Lightning such a marvelous read is Stenson’s eye for detail and effective metaphor. Raised on a ranch in southern Alberta, he knows livestock and their subtle nuances. A flash of white in the eye, a perked ear, a switch of the tail, a hesitant moment – Stenson captures it all, lending the book credibility.
He also creates characters that are neither heroes nor villains. They are just people, shaped by forces that are much greater than humankind. And herein lies the core of Lightning. Land and weather dictate behaviour and reaction. His characters react differently to hardships manifested by things out of their control, and it is how they choose to cope that moulds their weaknesses and strengths.
"Lightning is a metaphor for the outrageous randomness of the frontier," Stenson says. "You have to roll with it. You can’t defy it and you can’t rope it down."
The land breeds a toughness, but it also inspires, often giving rise to cowboys as writers, thinkers and artists. Doc is a man with many interests, from phrenology and bowling to masonry. He reads most anything he can find.
"I’ve met a lot of cowboys who live up to the stereotype of having very little to say," says Stenson. "But there’s always that exception – the ones who are musicians, poets or who braid horsehair ropes."
Stenson may not be a working cowboy himself, but he’s done their history and character justice in this magnificent western that deserves a spot next to McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy.
Fred Stenson reads with Jacqueline Baker and Rudy Wiebe at How the West Was Written on October 16 at noon, and with Brian Brennan and Jill Foran at Alberta Bound III on October 17 at 7:30 p.m. |
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