The award-winning Western epic by "one of Canada's greatest living writers" (David Adams Richards) Lightning takes up where Fred Stenson's Giller-nominated and much-honoured novel, The Trade, left off.

It is 1881, and the fur trade has been forced to make room for another economy. Seven thousand cattle are crossing the border from Montana into newly named Alberta. The openrange ranch era, Canadian style, is about to begin. Doc Windham, a Texan, is one of the cowboys trailing the herd.

Fred Stenson has written sixteen books of fiction and non-fiction. Thing Feigned or Imagined: The Craft in Fiction is based on his experience as a writer of fiction and mentor . His cycle of historical novels, The Trade, Lightning and The Great Karoo have won and been nominated for many awards. The Trade (2000) and Lightning (2003) both won the Grant MacEwan Author’s Prize. The Trade also won the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction and the Edmonton Book Prize, and was nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Award and short-listed for the Giller Prize. The Great Karoo was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction in 2008. Stenson has been writer-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick, Grant MacEwan College, Calgary Public Library, the community of Whistler, and many other places. He has directed the Wired Writing Studio at The Banff Centre since 2001 and mentored in its writing studios prior to that. He has been the wit columnist at Alberta Views Magazine for the entire fifteen-year life of the publication. He has also written over 150 films and videos.

Fred Stenson's profile page