By Rudy Wiebe
Rudy Wiebe's The Temptations of Big Bear is an epic of the Canadian West. As the buffalo-based food supply vanishes, Big Bear leads his Plains Cree nation across the prairie in search of a means of retaining the way of life quickly being lost—a life his people have lived for thousands of years. Against the onslaught of the White Queen's representatives, Big Bear resists pressure to cede the ancestral right to the land of his hungry but free people in exchange for temporary nourishment and a reserve.