SOURCE: A review of Alberta, in Bloomsbury Review, Vol. 13, No. 5, September-October, 1993, p. 15.

In the following review, Caile praises the second edition of Alberta.

The Canadian province of Alberta corresponds to states to the south wherein plains and mountains meet. In Alberta, Robert Kroetsch describes the contrasting elements of splendid peaks and vast rolling plains, of wide rivers and parched homesteads, of coal mines, wheat and oil fields, of an Indian past and robust upstart cities.

Alberta’s settlers have maintained their distinctive cultural groupings to a greater extent than in the United States, however. Its northern placement introduces muskeg and glaciers to the equation. Its people—in many ways the focus of the book—seem a thinner layer atop a larger land.

Robert Kroetsch gives us a writer’s travel guide—a profile of a province, a portrait of the people who live on it. Names roll out...