By the Banks of the Brokenhead: One Life, And One Summer, on the Canadian Prairie

As daughter of Edward Schreyer, governor general of Canada and premier of Manitoba, and great-granddaughter of Anton Schreyer, late-nineteenth-century immigrant and pioneer, Karmel Schreyer grew up in a tradition of both pioneer simplicity and political activism. After more than a decade of globetrotting, Schreyer returns from her Hong Kong home to the Manitoba homestead to spend a summer introducing her two young daughters to their Canadian heritage. In the process, they learn about cultivating a vegetable garden, the wonders of the Great Plains, the importance of extended families and are sent on a 1600-mile odyssey by the United States Department of Homeland Security. Seamlessly incorporating her grandfather's unpublished journals from a century earlier, By the Banks of the Brokenhead is both a history of one of Canada's leading families and an intimate description of how past and future connect and reconnect across continents and generations. "I enjoyed this original and delightful account of what it is like to be the daughter of a man who is living Canadian history. This couldn't have been an easy subject to tackle, but Karmel Schreyer pulls it off with humour and a light touch. Through her genuine sense of awe at what it took to build this country, and her family's contribution to it, I was moved too, as other readers will be." -- Sharon Butala, author of 'The Perfection of the Morning and Lilac Moon: Dreaming of the Real West'