The North Wind Knows My Name

In Albert McLeod's vibrant memoir, we see again that you can take the boy out of the country, but you can't take the country out of the boy. In 1956, at age seventeen, he leaves the primitive family farm on the frozen prairie of Manitoba for the bright lights of Winnipeg. In this intimate portrayal of his life, we journey along with him, ending up in his classroom, where he is a Professor at California State University Fresno, intrigued by Buddhism and trained in gestalt therapy and the theories of Carl Jung. In 1993 he finds his spiritual home at the Esalen Institute, which, like his life--like all our lives--balances on a precarious cliff, overlooking an ocean of possibilities. McLeod describes with humor the art of milking, the sport of egg and snowball fights, and the madness of hockey, which, as he imagines it, is the root of all things Canadian. He writes about the baptism of his family into a Christian fundamentalist cult, full of shame and fear of hell fires. He feels the frozen winds of grief when he is only eight, at the death of his mother. He writes and weeps as he imagines the spiraling death of Alvin, trapped in a bomber over Germany. McLeod views his life as a holy roller coaster ride, with the ups and downs familiar to each of us. Big skies, vast prairie horizons, and scintillating northern lights--all much on display here--invite flights of imagination, wonder, and gratitude. Like the wolf cries that echo in the background, McLeod's voice draws us into the challenges of primitive farm life. Squirrled away in this late harvest of leaves, are munchies enough for all seasons. This is a story of the whippersnapper days, of the larks and sadness common to all children. McLeod's little town of Norgate, like Brigadoon itself, has long vanished. In an early chapter, he returns with his son, Todd, to visit the family home, built by his father and grandfather in 1909. He bookmarks into history the lives of his family and of others, who lived "the short and simple annals of the poor." This book could easily be a novel, but it is not. As we say, you can't make this stuff up. It's real, gritty, funny, magical and tragic all at once. McLeod insists that each life is a gift, and he believes that as we resurrect childhood memories, embracing the refracted light and dark, we can better understand ourselves and heal our souls.