Sawbones Memorial (New Canadian Library) - Softcover

Sinclair Ross was born on a homestead near Shelbrooke in northern Saskatchewan in 1908. He dropped out of school after grade eleven to work in a bank. After working in many small-town banks in Saskatchewan, he transferred to a bank in Winnipeg in 1933. In 1941 he published his first novel, As For Me and My House, with its evocation of prairie life during the Depression. The prairie is the major setting for his two collections of short fiction, The Lamp at Noon and Other Stories and The Race and Other Stories.

From 1942 until 1946 Ross served with the Canadian army in London, England. In 1946 he returned briefly to Winnipeg before settling in Montreal, where he continued in banking until his retirement in 1968.

Ross’ later novels, The Well, Whir of Gold, and Sawbones Memorial, continue his exploration of prairie life and its power to challenge as well as sustain its inhabitants.

Upon his retirement Ross lived in Greece and then in Spain. He returned to Montreal in 1980, and two years later moved to Vancouver.

Sinclair Ross died in Vancouver in 1996.

"If you've never read Sinclair Ross, the Saskatchewan-born writer who helped define prairie realism, give thanks to the University of Alberta Press for this exquisitely produced quality paperback reissue. And if you have, now is the time to reacquaint yourself with one of the most distinct voices in Western Canadian literature....With Sawbones Memorial, he perfectly captures the rhythms and realities of small-town life in the West....(T)he book explores both the generosity and the hateful bigotry found in small towns everywhere. There is tenderness here, and bitterness, too....Also reprinted by the U of A Press are two other Ross novels, Whir of Gold and The Well. Both are dazzling. Marc Horton, The Edmonton Journal

"Given this continuing critical engagement with Ross's writing, we can be grateful to the University of Alberta Press for reissuing the three novels of Sinclair Ross no longer in print: The Well, Whir of Gold, and Sawbones Memorial....Hardy provides something like a close reading of the novel in his introduction, describing with unusual sensitivity the significant turns in the plot. He also suggests some of the ways in which the novel may be re-examined by a new generation in terms of cultural rifts between rural and urban....Mitchell takes this opportunity to show the various ways Ross critiques the bigotry, hypocrisy and mean-spiritedness of a small town, laying bare the faults of Upward but its warmth and attractions as well....I do wish Sinclair Ross could see these reissues, surely the most attractive presentation his work has ever received." David Stouck