Overview
It is 2058, and the glaciers are gone. A catastrophic drought has hit the prairies. Willa Van Bruggen is desperately trying to keep her family goat farm afloat, hoping against hope that the new water pipeline arrives before the bill collectors do.
Willa's son, Daniel, goes to work for the pipeline corporation instead of returning to help the family business. When Daniel reveals long-concealed secrets about his grandfather's death, Willa's world truly shatters. She's losing everything she values most: her farm, her son, her understanding of the past ? and even her grip on reality itself. Vividly illustrating the human cost of climate change, Watershed is a page-turner of a novel about forgiveness, adaptation, and family bonds.
Doreen Vanderstoop
Doreen Vanderstoop is a Calgary-based writer, storyteller, and musician. Her short fiction has appeared in Prairie Fire and online at Montreal Serai, Prairie Journal, Epiphany Magazine, and others. As a storyteller, she often performs at conferences, festivals, schools, libraries, and more, and leads workshops to inspire in others a passion for the oral tradition. Watershed is her debut novel.
Reviews
"Doreen Vanderstoop takes us into a future that feels more likely every day. The Van Bruggen family could be any of us, forced to adapt to a rapidly changing world. Watershed is a timely, beautifully rendered and prescient work. " ? Ann Eriksson, author of The Performance
"Riveting . . . Watershed is the best kind of futuristic fiction, the kind that becomes grass-roots reality as we read. " ? Wayne Grady, author of Up from Freedom
"This timely novel offers both a disturbing vision of what could be our not-too-distant future, and an inspiring reminder of the strength and courage ordinary people can draw from one another during troubled times. It offers a convincing portrayal of an Alberta contending with the consequences of its long obsession with oil profits, in which water has now become the force that drives power, money and politics. Ms. Vanderstoop's dystopian novel marries love of place, the power of human relationships and the hard reality of climate change to produce a work that should challenge a lot of our contemporary obsessions. This is a cautionary tale about what really matters, rendered the more powerful by the fact that it could very well prove to be as much a work of prophecy as of fiction. " ? Kevin Van Tighem, author of Our Place: Changing the Nature of Alberta
"This is us with just a few more decades on the Doomsday Clock. A future too well imagined, too likeable and plausible, to disown. " ? Fred Stenson, author of Who by Fire
Reader Reviews
Tell us what you think!
Sign Up or Sign In to add your review or comment.
Related Blog Posts
March 18, 2021
This month on All Lit Up, we're putting a spotlight on books by and about women and the people behind them. Today's publisher in profile is Brick Books, a fiercely independent poetry press now owned exclusively by women, that offers beautifully designed poetry books by established ... Read more
February 19, 2021
Beth Kope's third collection of poetry
Atlas of Roots (Caitlin Press) is a moving and personal reflection on the many facets of adoption. Tugging at the threads of her missing family history, Kope shares her quest to find her adoption records and the truth of her own conception. ... Read more
August 21, 2020
Fulfill your wanderlust as you armchair travel across time and space to unfamiliar places with these five quarantine-approved books.
June 30, 2020
After a music reviewing gig at the age of seventeen led him to travel writing, author Trevor Carolan has been regaling readers about his extensive travels around the world. He's since visited more than fifty countries and written several books of non-fiction, including three ... Read more
May 30, 2020
This week we got cooking with the right ingredients for five short story books to make your quarantine more digestible, talked about community, writing, and Ma Anand Sheela, discovered a near-future dystopian debut, and more.
May 29, 2020
A near-future dystopian debut novel set in Alberta in 2058,
Watershed (Freehand Books) by Calgary storyteller and musician Doreen Vanderstoop considers what happens after the glaciers are gone and water has become our most previous natural resource.
March 24, 2020
In recognition of World Water Day (March 22, 2020) we're bringing you two poems from the collection
Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds (Caitlin Press), the second in a trilogy, edited by Yvonne Blomer. Below, Yvonne shares more about our connection to water as an essential ... Read more
February 19, 2020
Author Marion Agnew shares her wonderfully art-filled techniques for avoiding or breaking through the dreaded writer's block and more about her novel
Reverberations (Signature Editions), which she says is more than a book about Alzheimer's – it's a testament to the bonds ... Read more
October 19, 2016
For Women's History Month, we've saved Wednesdays for highlighting Canadian women writers, their latest work, and their writing process. This Wednesday, we've got a short-but-sweet interview with Soraya Roberts, author of
In My Humble Opinion (ECW Press) – an examination ... Read more
March 30, 2016
Land of the Sky, the title poem of Valiani’s third poetry collection, is inspired by the Rocky Mountains, which inspire even more. Typically higher than 3,050 metres and created by breaks in the earth’s crust and glaciers 65 to 1.65 million years ago, the Rockies have a ... Read more