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One Book One Province

One Book One Province

About One Book One Province

The Saskatchewan Library Association introduced One Book One Province Saskatchewan in 2017 to give the province’s residents an opportunity to engage with a shared experience around a book. Our aim is to create an experience that supports literacy, creates a reading culture, raises the profile of libraries and literacy organizations, and builds community engagement through a shared experience. Each year, the SLA selects a title by a Saskatchewan Author that builds awareness and understanding in topics such as diversity, reconciliation, or an aspect of our provincial history.

2026 Book Selection

The 2026 One Book One Province title is Towards a Prairie Atonement by Trevor Herriot. The program will see libraries, book clubs, and individuals all across Saskatchewan join together in April 2026 to read this book and share discussions about the story.

About the Author

Trevor Herriot is a prairie naturalist and the author of several award-winning books, including Grass, Sky, Song and the national bestseller River in a Dry Land. A grassland activist and skilled birder, he is a frequent guest on CBC Radio, and he posts regularly on grassland culture and environmental issues on his blog Grass Notes (trevorherriot.blogspot.ca). He and his wife, Karen, live in Regina, and spend much of their time on a piece of Aspen Parkland prairie east of the city.

Our 2026 Events

Please stay tuned for a list of 2026 events.

About the Book and Where to Find It

In the wake of colonization, in a landscape of loss and dispossession, can we rediscover ways to share the land with other creatures and one another?

When the government recently tried to abandon its responsibility to protect what little remains of the natural prairie, Trevor Herriot pushed back, only to discover an injustice haunting the lands he was trying to defend. In 1938, when the Métis of Ste. Madeleine returned from working away, they found their homes burnt to the ground and their animals shot. The land they held in common was no longer theirs, but was now controlled by the federal government.

Facing his own responsibility as a descendent of settlers, he connects today’s ecological disarray to the legacy of Metis dispossession and the loss of their community lands. With Indigenous and settler people alienated from one another and from the grassland itself, hope and courage are in short supply. This book offers both by proposing an atonement that could again bring people and prairie together.

[University of Regina Press]

Towards a Prairie Atonement is the winner of two 2017 Saskatchewan Book Awards—Publishing Award and City of Regina Book Award.

Find the book in your region:

Resources

Resources including the 2026 OBOP Study Guide, Poster, and supporting material will be made available in November.

For more information about One Book One Province, contact SLA Program Coordinator Milena Džordeski by emailing mdzordeski@saskla.ca.

2024 – Miss G and Me by Jennifer S. Wallace
2023 – Five Little Indians by Michelle Good
2022 – Arab Cooking on a Prairie Homestead by Habeeb Salloum
2021 – Blanket Toss Under Midnight Sun by Paul Seesequasis
2020 – A Geography of Blood by Candace Savage
2019 – Just Pretending by Lisa Bird-Wilson
2018 – Out of Old Saskatchewan Kitchens by Amy Jo Ehman
2017 – The Education of Augie Merasty: A Residential School Memoir by Joseph Auguste Merasty with David Carpenter