This Bright Dust

“A stirring tale of the Great Depression on Canada’s Alberta prairie. Readers will be moved.” — Publishers Weekly

One of the CBC’s Canadian Fiction Books to Read in Fall 2024

As the Great Depression winds down and war in Europe looms, the small Prairie community of Grayley is all but abandoned. After a decade of dust and drought, few families remain. With growing season approaching, Abel Dodds and the Wisharts decide to plant their crops once again — their last chance to make a living on their debt-burdened farms. But when they learn of an impending royal visit, tensions ignite between the neighbours.

Deeply rooted in the landscape of the Prairies and laced with contemporary concerns, This Bright Dust deftly explores the relationship between people and the land they inhabit. In a richly layered novel, Berkhout tells a moving tale of promise and disillusionment, of near disaster and the cultivation of joy.

ISBN: 9781773104164
Format: Paperback
Pages: 242
Publisher: Goose Lane Editions
Published: September 03, 2024

“To love and be fearless. This Bright Dust is the story of hope, defiant in a time of drought and impending war. A textured and beautifully written tale of lives swept up by the dust storms and winter blizzards of history, it will haunt readers long after they turn the last page.”“Nina Berkhout writes with beautiful clarity of the Dustbowl Thirties in this haunting tale of two families grappling with the Prairie land they live on and love. In its attention to the earth and more-than-human world, as well as questions of how we care for each other amid potential calamity, the novel gains an eerily contemporary resonance. I was immersed.”“Nina Berkhout has constructed a perfect pas de deux, where the characters dance deftly around the words they cannot bring themselves to say. This Bright Dust, the town of Grayley, and its remaining residents will stay with you long after you finish this book.”“In This Bright Dust, Nina Berkhout’s fading town of Grayley has been devastated by the Great Depression. Even for its loyal residents — skinny, haggard, and dwindling in number — it’s a harsh place of droughts and blizzards, where grasshoppers chew through the curtains and the walls are dismantled for fuel. And yet! What a gentle, loving story this is, gracefully told, with a keen understanding of an earlier time. When the dust storm settles, you never know what you might find among the wild roses.”“As the royals’ arrival looms, Berkhout builds tension out of Abel’s outrage and Una’s need for hope. Along the way, she portrays the beauty of flowering wheat fields and the danger of dust storms in stark prose, and she grounds the narrative in themes of neighborliness and self-sacrifice. Readers will be moved.”