Prairie Edge

A Novel

By: Conor Kerr

Narrated by: Conor Kerr, Sarah Gervais

Shortlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize

The Giller Prize-longlisted author of Avenue of Champions returns with a frenetic, propulsive crime thriller that doubles as a sharp critique of modern activism and challenges listeners to consider what “Land Back” might really look like.

Meet Isidore “Ezzy” Desjarlais and Grey Ginther: two distant Métis cousins making the most of Grey’s uncle’s old trailer, passing their days playing endless games of cribbage and cracking cans of cheap beer in between. Grey, once a passionate advocate for change, has been hardened and turned cynical by an activist culture she thinks has turned performative and lazy. One night, though, she has a revelation, and enlists Ezzy, who is hopelessly devoted to her but eager to avoid the authorities after a life in and out of the group home system and jail, for a bold yet dangerous political mission: capture a herd of bison from a national park and set them free in downtown Edmonton, disrupting the churn of settler routine. But as Grey becomes increasingly single-minded in her newfound calling, their act of protest puts the pair and those close to them in peril, with devastating and sometimes fatal consequences.

For those drawn to the electric storytelling of Morgan Talty and the taut register of Stephen Graham Jones, Conor Kerr’s Prairie Edge is at once a gripping, darkly funny caper and a raw reckoning with the wounds that persist across generations.

©2024 Conor Kerr (P)2024 Strange Light

Critic reviews

"Prairie Edge is both a propulsive crime narrative built around successive, compounding blunders and a work of literary art that tells us about what it means to live in a world where action and rhetoric around decolonization fail to align....Kerr extracts maximum amounts of comedy and pathos from the novel’s premise while populating this fictional world with resonant characters whose difficult experiences with group homes, social services, and activist circles are softened by enduring family bonds and friendships. Kerr entertains us with a contemporary caper while inviting readers to consider a future that has reckoned with the past.”—Giller Prize 2024 jury citation

“A powerful…tale of friendship and hope in the face of intergenerational trauma.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Searing yet compassionate, sharp yet tender. Conor Kerr’s Prairie Edge is both a marvel of storytelling and a devastating critique of activists who care more about building their brands than taking care of their kin. Get swept up in this captivating story, then reckon with its startling implications.”—Alicia Elliott, author of And Then She Fell