"Shortly after its birth in 1905, the province of Alberta was already neck-deep in trouble." "The settlement of the Peace River country reached dangerously too far. The southeastern dry belt disintegrated in drought. Irrigation projects teetered in crisis. Coal miners agonized over their lives and their livings. And clergymen serving hundreds of new communities and tenuous outposts were stretched to the breaking point.". "Against this background of confrontation, constraint and adversity, Albertans searched for human fulfillment in their personal lives." "David C. Jones follows the sagas of a heretic, an artist, two paladins of the people, a coal boss and his enemies, a spy, a priest, a cat, and a sage. Through his eyes we see what the human spirit does with misfortune: the spirit feeds on trouble until it grows or sickens."--BOOK JACKET.