The Snow Walker

by Farley Mowat

Book Overview

"Central to Farley Mowat's writing is his quest to understand the often-forgotten native people of the vast arctic wilderness. In this moving collection, he allows these people to describe in their... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1552632482
• ISBN13: 9781552632482
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Key Porter Books
• Length: 209 Pages
• Weight: 0.78 lbs.

Customer Reviews

The demise of a people

Mowat is, once again, critical of government agencies and organizations in the mandatory relocation of natives to an inhospitable location and failure to monitor the results of the move. Creates a better understanding of how a group of people become extinct. A difficult survival made more difficult!

The Snow Walker

This is a great collection of stories in classic Farley Mowat style; compelling. A fantastic movie was made of one of the short stories in the collection and also titled 'Snow Walker', but read the book first. He's written many wonderful books, but my favorite tales will always be of the Inuit where his love of the people and their culture shines through. Chrissy K. McVay author of 'Souls of the North Wind'

quick yet profound stories, eh? [no spoilers]

"The Snow Walker" is a collection of beautifully written short stories centered in the extreme cold artic regions. As an individual who has ventured into the northern lands, Farley Mowat conveys ten compelling tales from natives and their cultural heritage. The narratives range from superstitious to legendary adventure and either inspires the spirit or brings a dark mood to the betrayal faced by the indigenous people by the white man. Those not fluent with certain acronyms or northern culture might have difficulty understanding small segments of some stories. A detailed map of the significant terrains would have been useful. Thank you.

Well crafted prose from a versatile writer

This collection of short stories by the Canadian writer Farley Mowat, is outstanding proof of his versatility. Although many of his best books are almost unplanned, coming to fruition after some sort of initial spontaneous combustion (I'm thinking of "People of the Deer" especially), the fictional elements in "The Snow Walker" indicate a methodical mind capable of forming well crafted prose. All these stories take place in the Arctic, or have to do with it. Many are based on people Mowat met on his travels or heard about from others. They contain the grains of ideas and don't attempt to do more than expand that one notion, as I think short stories should. Hence the stories are focussed and the issue at hand is brought into sharp relief, sometimes in only a few pages. Like a number of Mowat's works, this one has been used in schools for many years, and deservedly so, as it is some of the best Canadian short fiction of its kind (i.e., about the Arctic).