“(Mitchell’s) sensuous response to her environment is powerfully reflected in her characters, who are seeking to align themselves with that indifferent world even as the tensions of their past lead them into an intricate, inevitable and entirely convincing tragedy.” Antonia MacDonald-Smythe, Commonwealth Prize-Jury Chair
Booklist picks Shandi Mitchell’s Under This Unbroken Sky as one of ten best first novels of the year.
“Under This Unbroken Sky crushed and inspired me simultaneously, a novel I didn’t want to end. Shandi Mitchell’s prose strikes like a prairie thunder storm, every page building to an intensity that’s simply awing to behold. Brilliant and honest and brutal, this new voice feels as old and right as anything I’ve read in a very long time.”
Joseph Boyden, Giller Prize winner, author of Through Black Spruce, Three Day Road.
☆ Starred Review “The starkly gorgeous prairie comes alive…Combining the storytelling skills of Ivan Doig with the stunning landscapes in Karen Fisher’s A Sudden Country, Mitchell’s harrowing story delivers an unforgettable literary tribute to an immigrant people and their struggle. The lyrical style, the riveting historical material, and the treatment of prejudice make the novel a great book-club choice.” Booklist
“A magnificent novel, written with grace and power, Under This Unbroken Sky is a powerhouse of a debut that grips from start to finish.”
Steven Galloway, author of Ascension and The Cellist of Sarajevo
“The tragedy Shandi Mitchell explores in her new novel is as unforgettable as the truth and stark beauty of its telling. It is a tragedy forged as much by the arrogance and ignorance of Canada’s treatment of Ukrainian immigrants to the prairies as by the passions bred by hunger and hopelessness among those immigrants themselves. Mitchell’s extraordinary rendering of human suffering is matched by her ability to give powerful imaginative shape to the will to survive, to care for others, and to forgive the most brutal of trespasses.”
Janice Kulyk Keefer, author of The Ladies’ Lending Library
“Under This Unbroken Sky is a dazzling novel. Shandi Mitchell’s depiction of Depression-era prairie life has a vividness and veracity that brings to mind Willa Cather’s fiction, but Mitchell’s voice and her rendering of the human heart’s complexities are completely her own. She is a writer of immense talent.”
Ron Rash, New Times Best-Selling Author of Serena.
A bold and brutal study of love, betrayal and loyalty. Beautifully pitched and unsentimental in execution. Brilliant.
Marie Claire Magazine, UK
“This stunning first novel is powerful, tragic and utterly gripping.”
The Times UK
Beautifully drawn characters, flawless descriptions of an unrelenting landscape and the intricate plot add to this harrowing, breathtaking novel… it’ll warm your heart and then break it. Not to be missed.
SHE Magazine, UK
A beautiful story about two families who have nothing, yet manage to strip each other of everything.
Easy Living UK
Shandi Mitchell’s impressive debut may not sound like your typical beach read but this tautly controlled epic should keep those in search of some literary escapism hooked until the last page all the same.
Metro UK
…Mitchell has created a highly absorbing and animated narrative that painstakingly explores the hardships of immigrant life on the Canadian Prairies…powerfully portrayed and completely unpredictable…deftly demonstrates Mitchell’s prowess as a writer of fiction. This talent, combined with her filmmaker’s keen eye for detail and obvious appreciation for action, has allowed her to bring a family, a landscape and a fragment of Canadian history to life. Winnipeg Free Press Sharon Chisvin
A quintessentially Canadian tale of family seeking refuge from tyranny:their journey, their poverty, their dreams… These are earthy folk whose apprehension of the world is elemental, immediate…the children are wonderfully evoked, from their innocent collections to their dreams of the future and their resolute donning of adult responsibilities…there are breathtaking moments where the overwhelming beauty of the image transports the writing to a different horizon. This nation, so richly complex, so lucky in its diversity, has been built on the blood of people who did indeed suffer and sacrifice. We owe that story our best attention.
Globe and Mail Aretha Van Herk
There was a school of writing a generation or two ago that admonished, Show, don’t tell. That less is more. And: Make it new, to channel Gertrude Stein. These writers were bare boned. They didn’t use adjectives and rarely hinted at what was going on in the heads of their characters. Then, later, came along a generation who, doing what upstarts do, threw out all that and gave us interior lives, thoughts and longings unspoken. They waxed and waned. And there there is the bauhaus school of thought, where form follows function. I thought a lot about all this reading While Under This Unbroken Sky. This is a stark and hard-edged novel. And the style reflects it. It reads in the best of all these traditions, but mostly it draws us a picture. It shows. The story is one of bare existence on the prairie and the form of the story conveys the starkness of that existence. The style is hard. You feel as if you’re walking through a field yet to be cleared of rock and boulder. bookreview.mostlyfiction.com
…UNDER THIS UNBROKEN SKY is as compelling as it is heart-wrenching. The severe desolation of life on the Canadian prairie is so richly described by Shandi Mitchell’s lyrical writing…but there’s a beauty in its bleakness. Bookreporter.com Bronwyn Miller
Mitchell’s first shows unbroken depth… with trimmed, precise language, active verbs and activated scenes. Mitchell carries this across the novel’s breadth. This country’s collective memory holds as generally true that Western Canada was a wide-open wilderness broken by immigrants: men with lean, taut arms, women with unbreakable backs, children with early knowledge of hard, hard work. Without writers such as Mitchell, the experience and motivations that form the foundation of collective memory would be forgotten.
The Coast Halifax Sean Flinn
HITTING the ground running with her gorgeous, tragic debut, Shandi Mitchell combines a moving tale of the early 20th Century migrant experience with a sweeping family saga as vast and unforgiving as the prairies where events take place. Townsville Bulletin TOP READS, Clayton Smales, Australia
☆ Starred Review Superb historical fiction filled with tension, unforgettable characters, and a dramatic setting; enthusiastically recommended. Library Journal
This is one of the finest novels I have read this year—a lyrical, evocative tale of pioneer life from an immensely talented debut author. Historical Novel Society-Editor Top Picks
Opening Shandi Mitchell’s debut novel is like stepping into an old Works Progress Administration photograph of the Great Depression. Reading it, I had to keep looking up to make sure my kids weren’t starving and coyotes weren’t outside my door. If those powerful WPA images rivet us with stories only hinted at, then “Under This Unbroken Sky” spills us right into the center of one such bleak, hardscrabble tale. The author has already made a name for herself as a director and screenwriter. With “Under the Unbroken Sky,” she proves that a good storyteller excels, no matter what medium she chooses. St Louis Post Amy Woods Butler