Same Ground
CBC Books | | Posted: September 20, 2022 7:53 PM | Last Updated: September 20, 2022
Russell Wangersky
Wangersky's great-great-grandfather crossed the continent in search of gold in 1849. William Castle Dodge was his name, and he was 22 years old. He wrote a diary of that eventful journey that comes into the author's hands 160 years later. And typically, quixotically, Wangersky decides to follow Dodge's westward trail across the great bulging middle of America, not in search of gold but something even less likely: that elusive thing called family.
What ensues becomes this story, by turns hilarious and profound, about a very long trip — by car, in Wangersky's case, and on mule and foot in Dodge's. Interweaving his experiences on the road with Dodge's diary, the author contemplates the human need to hunt for roots and meaning as he — and Dodge — encounter immigrants who risk everything to be somewhere else, while only glimpsing those who are there already and who want to hold onto their claim in the stream of human migration.
Same Ground is a story about what time washes away and what persists — and what we might find, unexpectedly, if we go looking. (From ECW Press)
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Russell Wangersky is a journalist, columnist and award-winning fiction and nonfiction writer. Based in St. John's, Newfoundland & Labrador, he is the author of several books, including the 2015 psychological thriller novel Walt, memoir Burning Down the House and short fiction collection The Hour of Bad Decisions. His book Whirl Away was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2012.