REVENGE OF THE LAND. A Century of Greed, Tragedy, and Murder on a Saskatchewan Farm

Hardback. In August 1987, a grisly murder took place on a farm outside Pasqua, close to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. A teenaged boy shot and killed his grandparents and then spent the month partying with his brother and their friends. Only when the neighbours noticed that the crops were not being harvested did they become suspicious. The author set out to investigate the case, but, before long, she began to feel that the central character was the farm itself - especially when she uncovered the hardship and disaster suffered by those who tried to tame this section of prairie. The author tells the ingriguing and meticulously researched stories of all the previous owners of the same tract of land. Here are : Douglas Carmichael, the pioneer farmer, who was broken by hardship and government insensitivity; Thomas Aspdin, the ex-RCMP officer, who married a kinswoman of Sitting Bull; John Hawke Grayson, early entrepreneur, to whom the land was one step to amassing the family fortune; Benjamin Smith, an ambitious farmer, obsessed with early technology; Bob Foote, who gambled away years of hard work on the roll of the dice; John R. Green, ambitious and neurotic, who built a fortune through land speculation; Wellington White, brick-maker and businessman, who, with his glamorous wife, took Moose Jaw by storm; and Frank and Kay Eberle, thrifty and hard-working, who were to meet violent deaths on the land they worked for 40yrs. Illus., Notes, Bibliog. and Index. 435pp. lge. 8vo. h/back. From the library of true-crime writer, Wilfred Gregg, with his personal b/plate. With black felt-tip remainder mk. to lower edge. Vg. in vg+ dw. A fairly heavy book which may require additional postage.