p align=left">"Sixteen years later Louis Riel would be
dressing himself again ... to be hanged by
his neck until he is at last, perfectly,
dead. 0 my God have mercy."

So begins Rudy Wiebe's powerful portrayal of Louis Riel, the mystic revolutionary of the Northwest, and Gabriel Dumont - "the savage" as he calls himself - the great buffalo hunter who becomes Riel's commander-in-chief.

With the same epic scope and inspired vision that he brought to The Temptations of Big Bear (winner of the Governor Generals Award for Fiction), Wiebe recreates an agonizing chapter in Canadian history which can never be forgotten - the explosive world of the North West Rebellions and the characters of the two men who led them.

Written with powerful clarity and compassion, The Scorched-Wood People is an immense achievement, a brilliant exploration of the faces of prophetic vision, the morality of politics and the nature of faith.

Rudy Wiebe was born near Fairholme, Saskatchewan in 1934. From the University of Alberta, he received a B.A. 1956 and a M.A. in Creative Writing in 1960. He studied under a Rotary International Fellowship at the University of Tuebingen in West Germany, and in 1962 he received a Bachelor of Theology degree from the Mennonite Brethren Bible College. In 1962ᆧ63 he was editor of the Mennonite Brethren Herald, a position which he resigned because of the controversy over his first novel,Peace Shall Destroy Many. From 1967 to 1992 he was Professor of Creative Writing and English at the University of Alberta. Wiebe has published twenty-five books, including nine novels and the non-fiction best-sellerStolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman, co-authored with Yvonne Johnson. He was awarded the Governor General’s Award for fiction forThe Temptations Of Big Bear in 1973, and again in 1994 forA Discovery Of Strangers. He is also the winner of the Lorne Pierce Gold Metal of the Royal Society of Canada for his contribution to Canadian literature ླ87). Wiebe has served as chairman of both the Writer’s Guild of Alberta and the Writers’ Union of Canada. He now lives in Edmonton, Alberta.

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