Standing in the Footprints of Beasts

by Danica Klewchuk

257 pages, Paperback

Published September 15, 2025

Reviews

[Alberta Views Magazine]

A kaleidoscopic quality permeates Danica Klewchuk’s debut memoir, Standing in the Footprints of Beasts. Each of its 15 essays is an artful arrangement of images and fragmented memories, a colourful depiction of the author’s early life. We meet young Danica when she’s not yet 10, living in rural northern Alberta—a landscape punctuated by oilfield towns, graveyards and highways. By the book’s end, we see the mature, self-possessed woman Klewchuk is on the verge of embodying. Overall, this memoir-in-essays could be read as a non-idyllic coming of age story, tracking its protagonist across continents as she grows into herself. The chronology takes us from the enforced innocence of Klewchuk’s childhood in an orthodox religious community, to the enforced worldliness of discovering one can be accosted just as easily when praying in a temple in Laos as when serving drinks in an Edmonton bar.

Review by Jessica Waite
Full review at: https://albertaviews.ca/standing-in-t...

[Rochelle Squires · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection of essays by a fresh new voice in Canadian nonfiction. Watch for my review in the Winnipeg Free Press