Jacob's Wound: A Search for the Spirit of Wildness

by Trevor Herriot

Book Overview

The award-winning author ofRiver in a Dry Landexplores the Nature that weand our religionssprang from The Genesis story of Jacob, the patriarch of the Judeo-Christian tradition, wrestling with a spirit has been interpreted in a multitude of ways, but never more persuasively than by Trevor Herriot inJacob's Wound. He sees it as a struggle between Jacob and his wilder twin brother, Esau, whose birthright Jacob has swindled. The central idea of Herriot's brilliantly written, observant, and groundbreaking book is the wound that Jacob, the farmer, the civilized man, suffered in vanquishing Esau, the hunter, the primitive man. And the central question posed is whether we, as Jacob did with Esau, can eventually reconcile with the wildness we conquered and have been estranged from for so long. As if ambling through the author's beloved Qu'Appelle Valley in Saskatchewan,Jacob's Woundtakes readers on an untrodden path through history, memoir, science, and theology. Along the way, Herriot tells us stories of the past and present that illuminate what we once were and what we have become. It's a measured journey motivated by curiosity rather than by destination, and at every turn there is insight and beautiful writing.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0771041365
• ISBN13: 9780771041365
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
• Length: 358 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.

Customer Reviews

a good read...

Jacob's Wound was Herriot's attempt at showing how our contemporary society is wounded by the loss of a sense of the wild. He locates our problem with the shift from a hunter-gatherer-wild society to a farming-gathered-city society. This shift is referred to as Jacob's Wound, the experience where the story of Jacob is historically preferred to that of the wild-man Esau. Herriot suggests a return to our pagan-wild roots might help contemporary culture, as well as the Christian church, recover from its wounding at the Jabok river. I think there is value in balancing out our contemporary city-focused living with a 'return to the wild' as suggested by Herriot.