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How to Breathe Water
A road trip through the prairies prompts acclaimed writer Sharon Butala to unearth the stories of the natural world around her, and at the same time revisit her own personal histories.
After an isolating and demoralizing year during the COVID-19 pandemic, a friend invites Sharon Butala to join her on a road trip – together they will drive the thirteen hundred kilometers from Calgary to Winnipeg, stopping as they please along the way. Sharon, relieved for a change of scenery, is keen to see again some of the locations that have been significant to her life on the prairies, including the ranch she lived on for thirty-three years with her husband before his death.
But along the way, the sites they visit – landmarks of Indigenous history, sites where her ancestors struggled to eke out a living – prompt Sharon to unearth her own personal history. She sifts through memories of a difficult childhood, of traumas deeply buried, of relationships both complicated and gratifying. Taking stock of the people and places she has lost and left behind brings her to the ultimate confrontation – with mortality – which she explores with uncommon wisdom and frankness.
Her most intimate work to date, Sharon Butala’s How to Breathe Water is a love letter to the lands and waters of the prairies and a stirring exploration of the places and moments that mark and mold our lives.
After an isolating and demoralizing year during the COVID-19 pandemic, a friend invites Sharon Butala to join her on a road trip – together they will drive the thirteen hundred kilometers from Calgary to Winnipeg, stopping as they please along the way. Sharon, relieved for a change of scenery, is keen to see again some of the locations that have been significant to her life on the prairies, including the ranch she lived on for thirty-three years with her husband before his death.
But along the way, the sites they visit – landmarks of Indigenous history, sites where her ancestors struggled to eke out a living – prompt Sharon to unearth her own personal history. She sifts through memories of a difficult childhood, of traumas deeply buried, of relationships both complicated and gratifying. Taking stock of the people and places she has lost and left behind brings her to the ultimate confrontation – with mortality – which she explores with uncommon wisdom and frankness.
Her most intimate work to date, Sharon Butala’s How to Breathe Water is a love letter to the lands and waters of the prairies and a stirring exploration of the places and moments that mark and mold our lives.
288 pages, Paperback
Published September 1, 2025
9 people are currently reading
32 people want to read
About the author
Sharon Butala
67 books60 followersSharon Butala (born Sharon Annette LeBlanc, August 24, 1940 in Nipawin, Saskatchewan) is a Canadian writer and novelist.
Her first book, Country of the Heart, was published in 1984 and won the Books in Canada First Novel Award.
As head of the Eastend Arts Council she spearheaded the creation of the Wallace Stegner House Residence for Artists in which Wallace Stegner's childhood home was turned into a retreat for writers and artists.[14]
She lived in Eastend until Peter's death in 2007. She now lives in Calgary, Alberta.
She was shortlisted for the Governor General's award twice, once for fiction for Queen of the Headaches, and once for nonfiction for The Perfection of the Morning.
The Fall 2012 issue of Prairie Fire, entitled The Visionary Art of Sharon Butala was dedicated to Butala and her work and influence.
(from Wikipedia)
Her first book, Country of the Heart, was published in 1984 and won the Books in Canada First Novel Award.
As head of the Eastend Arts Council she spearheaded the creation of the Wallace Stegner House Residence for Artists in which Wallace Stegner's childhood home was turned into a retreat for writers and artists.[14]
She lived in Eastend until Peter's death in 2007. She now lives in Calgary, Alberta.
She was shortlisted for the Governor General's award twice, once for fiction for Queen of the Headaches, and once for nonfiction for The Perfection of the Morning.
The Fall 2012 issue of Prairie Fire, entitled The Visionary Art of Sharon Butala was dedicated to Butala and her work and influence.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
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January 10, 2026I read "How to Breathe Water" in a single day, unwilling to set aside the book for the other things I was meant to be doing, and I refuse to apologize. It could be this is one of those experiences, like listening to a symphony or watching a movie, that are best uninterrupted. There is an unmistakable depth to the stories of a person who has lived a long life, especially a writer keenly aware of the world around her and drawn to understand the relationships we have not only with each other but with ourselves. Part buddy trip for two adventurous and mature women, part cultural history of the unfathomable wide prairie, part personal soul inquiry (a gentle reckoning with what has been too painful to remember), at the end of the journey I too felt changed. Did I mention the insightful asides about writing? These are equally profound. An exceptional memoir. Really, you don't want to miss this.
January 1, 2026
Sharon Butala is a must read for anyone who calls Saskatchewan their home. This book really educated me about her background, family, childhood, the places she’s called home and her thoughts on some controversial Canadian topics. It was well written and makes me want to read more from her next year. At some point I hope to be able to say I’ve read all her books but I’m sure I’ve only read four so far. Our lives really are just one long road trip so the way this book flows from one chapter to the next with each passing landmark or town on their Calgary to Winnipeg journey, provoking her reflections of various stages and ages of her life was quite enjoyable to read. This was a great memoir to wrap the reading year up with! It mentions all the communities you’d expect to Butala to pass through with some surprises at the end when she drives by a few southeast Saskatchewan areas! So for a reader like myself, it covers places I grew up near as well as places near me in present day. I truly hope she enjoys her final years in Saskatoon where she writes she feels at home in. I was born there myself but did not stay for long yet the rare occasions I find myself in the city, I feel at ease there and have often wondered where exactly in the city my origins took form and what life was like for my mother at the time.
January 1, 2026
I read a review of this memoir, and decided I had to read it as soon as I could get my hands on it. The reviewer was left flabbergasted, and delighted.
I have to agree with him. It's an unusual memoir, partly mystical and partly so down to earth that she describes certain coffee shops in food courts of malls you wouldn't really want to admit visiting, but it's no use pretending we don't all land up in places like that.
You could call this book a coming of age story for someone in her 80s. We have a tendency to believe we've already got everything figured out by our late twenties, but who really has?
Here, Sharon Butala goes on a road trip from Calgary to Winnipeg and back with an old friend, comes to terms with a past trauma, and shares points of fact not always considered factual. She has been widowed for years, but still is hearing her husband, as she describes most widows hearing:
...things - music that no one else can hear, voices whispering to them, sometimes
maliciously, dead husbands sitting quietly in the living room reading, their presence
so palpable widows get out of bed to inquire as to what they want, or inexplicable thumps
or tapping in their homes that they had never heard before. The marital conversations
and arguments continue for years, although one is living and one is not. And the dreaming!
So intense and so seemingly real. Put all those experiences on grief, we're told, dismissively,
but we do not, because we know what we know.
As a woman looking nervously toward my next few years, when I too will (hopefully) reach 80, I was startled by "...the Fates themselves, the Moirai, were gazing coldly down on me, spinning, as they had watched my hospitalized husband." Suddenly I'm nervously peering around at my ceiling.
I've read several of Sharon's other books, novels and memoirs, and the mystical is hinted at, though in this book it's stronger, yet also not spelled out. She refers to private mystical experiences not to be easily shared, as they're too easily misinterpreted, dismissed.
Her writing is both lucid and liminal. I found it spellbinding. I saw her give a talk this last fall, where she wondered whether she has another book in her. She has over twenty, but recognized she is aging, and realizes her life, like no one's, is predictable. Neither is this book.
I have to agree with him. It's an unusual memoir, partly mystical and partly so down to earth that she describes certain coffee shops in food courts of malls you wouldn't really want to admit visiting, but it's no use pretending we don't all land up in places like that.
You could call this book a coming of age story for someone in her 80s. We have a tendency to believe we've already got everything figured out by our late twenties, but who really has?
Here, Sharon Butala goes on a road trip from Calgary to Winnipeg and back with an old friend, comes to terms with a past trauma, and shares points of fact not always considered factual. She has been widowed for years, but still is hearing her husband, as she describes most widows hearing:
...things - music that no one else can hear, voices whispering to them, sometimes
maliciously, dead husbands sitting quietly in the living room reading, their presence
so palpable widows get out of bed to inquire as to what they want, or inexplicable thumps
or tapping in their homes that they had never heard before. The marital conversations
and arguments continue for years, although one is living and one is not. And the dreaming!
So intense and so seemingly real. Put all those experiences on grief, we're told, dismissively,
but we do not, because we know what we know.
As a woman looking nervously toward my next few years, when I too will (hopefully) reach 80, I was startled by "...the Fates themselves, the Moirai, were gazing coldly down on me, spinning, as they had watched my hospitalized husband." Suddenly I'm nervously peering around at my ceiling.
I've read several of Sharon's other books, novels and memoirs, and the mystical is hinted at, though in this book it's stronger, yet also not spelled out. She refers to private mystical experiences not to be easily shared, as they're too easily misinterpreted, dismissed.
Her writing is both lucid and liminal. I found it spellbinding. I saw her give a talk this last fall, where she wondered whether she has another book in her. She has over twenty, but recognized she is aging, and realizes her life, like no one's, is predictable. Neither is this book.
January 9, 2026
What I took from this book was its commentary on the relentless passage of time, and of how our memories of years gone by can be some combination of so many different things, both positive and negative: vivid, joyful, nostalgic, fleeting, vague, unreliable, repressed, haunting. Our experiences obviously make us who we are, but how does that fit in with the fact that while some of our memories remain as clear as if they had happened yesterday, others become deeply buried, only to (perhaps) come back to light many years later? I appreciated Sharon Butala's candidness about her thoughts and experiences as she looks back on her life and tries to make sense of where the journey has taken her. A very interesting and enlightening read.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews