How to Breathe Water

A road trip through the prairies prompts acclaimed writer Sharon Butala to unearth the stories of the natural world around her, and at the same time revisit her own personal histories.

After an isolating and demoralizing year during the COVID-19 pandemic, a friend invites Sharon Butala to join her on a road trip - together they will drive the thirteen hundred kilometers from Calgary to Winnipeg, stopping as they please along the way. Sharon, relieved for a change of scenery, is keen to see again some of the locations that have been significant to her life on the prairies, including the ranch she lived on for thirty-three years with her husband before his death.

But along the way, the sites they visit - landmarks of Indigenous history, sites where her ancestors struggled to eke out a living - prompt Sharon to unearth her own personal history. She sifts through memories of a difficult childhood, of traumas deeply buried, of relationships both complicated and gratifying. Taking stock of the people and places she has lost and left behind brings her to the ultimate confrontation - with mortality - which she explores with uncommon wisdom and frankness.

Her most intimate work to date, Sharon Butala’s How to Breathe Water is a love letter to the lands and waters of the prairies and a stirring exploration of the places and moments that mark and mold our lives.

Sharon Butala is the author of more than twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, numerous essays and articles, some poetry and five produced plays. She published her first novel in 1984, Country of the Heart, which was nominated for the Books in Canada First Novel Award, followed closely by a collection of short stories, Queen of the Headaches (shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award). Sharon’s books have been on Canadian bestseller lists, including her memoir The Perfection of the Morning, which reached #1. Her story collection Season of Fury and Wonder was nominated for the Rogers Trust Fiction Prize and won the City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize for 2020. Sharon is an Officer of the Order of Canada. After spending several years in Calgary, she has moved back home to Saskatchewan.