Today my father would have been 97. Looking back, here he is in about 1970 with Rob at the ranch that he bought east of Brooks Alberta. Looking forward, the book I have written about him and his ranch has found a publisher! I spent the last year and a half writing an intertwined memoir of my French father, of the land he ranched in the drylands of Alberta from 1969 to 1999, and my reflection on our changing relationships with the land, with the peoples who came before us, and with non-human life. While I call my work creative non-fiction, it is a mix of essay, poetry, images, even a bit of fiction. I had long wanted to capture the strange beauty of prairie for those not familiar with it, especially now, at a time of disappearing family ranches and of Reconciliation with First Nations. As a counterpoint I write about my father’s unlikely path from a small town in the Vosges Mountains of Alsace to ranching in Alberta. The life, the writing, the publishing – equally celebration and journey!