Henry David Thoreau is remembered as a foremost nature writer. He was an ecologist before the term was invented. A man of many parts, including social critic, he is known to have had an influence on such internationally recognized leaders as Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

"Victor Carl Friesen, author of The Spirit of the Huckleberry, an astute analysis of Henry David Thoreau’s prose, again demonstrates his affinity for the Walden sage with this unique volume of poems and photographs. Taking a series of quotations demonstrating Thoreau’s sensuousness, he writes a poem for each and then illustrates them with outstanding colour photographs. The poems, mostly written in the blank verse form, have sturdy strength and remarkable insight into both Thoreau and nature."
- Walter Harding, Founding Secretary, The Thoreau Society Inc., State University of New York, Genesco

"Friesen is particularly qualified as a Thoreau scholar, for his personal interests extend well beyond literature to include natural history, a subject very much at the centre of Thoreau’s writings."
- Canadian Book Review Annual

Author (and painter) Victor Carl Friesen remains ever a “farmboy,” although he now, with his wife, Dorothy, lives in the town of Rosthern, Saskatchewan, but five miles from the quarter-section on which he was born. He holds MA and PhD degrees from the universities of Saskatchewan and Alberta respectively. Both his master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation focused on Henry David Thoreau, a foremost nature writer, and resulted in two books: The Spirit of the Huckleberry, a literary analysis of Thoreau’s work, and The Year Is a Circle, poems and photographs celebrating the American writer. Friesen has published nine other books and has won the Alberta Book of the Year Award and the Pfeiffer Award for academic research and writing. In addition, Friesen has authored some three hundred journal articles.

Victor Carl Friesen's profile page