The Great Karoo

Fred Stenson was born in Pincher Creek, Alberta, in 1951, and was raised on a farm in ranching country just to the south, near Twin Butte. After attending school in Pincher Creek, he completed a degree in economics at the University of Calgary in 1972. It is his home region — bordered by the Rockies to the west, a Blood Indian reserve to the east, and Montana to the south — that features prominently in much of his historical fiction.Since his first novel, Lonesome Hero, in 1974, Fred Stenson has published fourteen more books of fiction and non-fiction, and has written scripts for over 140 produced films and videos. It was his masterful third novel, The Trade (2000), which propelled Stenson into the elite ranks of Canadian fiction writers when it was nominated for the Giller Prize, in addition to winning the inaugural Grant MacEwan Writer’s Award, the City of Edmonton Book Prize, and the Writers Guild of Alberta’s Georges Bugnet Novel Award.Widely praised for its historical depth and vivid prose, The Trade is set in the Canadian West during last days of the fur trade, when the Hudson’s Bay Company traders ruled the rivers far from the eyes of eastern authorities. Stenson’s next novel, Lightning (2003), took up where The Trade left off — when ranching replaced fur trading in the West, and cowboys led vast herds of cattle up through the American states to Montana, Wyoming, and Alberta. Lightning also won the Grant MacEwan Writer’s Award.The Great Karoo is Fred Stenson’s eighth work of fiction. It follows The Trade and Lightning in telling an epic tale about life in the West through the eyes of regular individuals fighting to make it through each day, despite the large and often indifferent powers that control their fortunes. Today, Fred Stenson lives in Cochrane, Alberta.