Maria Enns

Author of Back in the Hills: A Healing Year on the Prairie2025 Braun Book Award Non-fiction Winner

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Back in the Hills

The hills of southwest Saskatchewan don't ask for much notice. Maria Enns has called these hills home for almost twenty years—and spent one of them paying close attention.Back in the Hills is about walking through a long, heavy season by walking through the pasture. Cow paths. Plant names. Stone circles on hilltops. Old foundations returning to grass. Season by season—through abundance and drought, joy and sorrow—she excavated the depths of an ordinary piece of prairie and found it giving back more than she expected: a teaching in resilience, belonging, and faith.Part botanical field notes, part memoir, part spiritual reckoning—this is a book for anyone who has ever found healing in an unexpected place.

About the Author

Maria Enns lives with her family on a farm in rural Saskatchewan, where she homeschools her children, serves her local church, and pays close attention to the land.She holds a Bachelor of Education in Arts Education and has taught in schools, galleries, and workshops.She writes about the hard, ordinary work of being a person—on a Saskatchewan farm, in a faith community, in a family.Back in the Hills is her first book.

Endorsements

"A salve for our times, Back in the Hills reminds us that the rhythms of the seasons are a blessing, as is the earth beneath our feet and the plants that spring from it. That our bonds with nature and each other are what provide for a fulfilled life and what bring true serenity, contentment, and, ultimately, an acceptance of the inevitable cycles of life. Partially a wonderful field guide, it reminds us that people are only a part of the interconnected and rich fabric of the natural world, and that understanding and appreciating the everyday miracles of growing things help root us in an increasingly complicated and challenging time.Writing with sensitivity and grace, Maria Enns shows us the glory of living and the preciousness of being in tune with all living things. She shows us that the fantastic need not be large but, rather, may be right beneath our feet. Uplifting while highly informative, Back in the Hills is a thoughtfully crafted, heartwarming, and meditative read. A truly wonderful book. Nourishing soul food in the spiritual sense."—David McLennan, University of Regina Press, author of Our Towns: Saskatchewan Communities from Abbey to Zenon Park

"Maria’s warm recounting of daily life on the farm, along with her descriptions of its seasons and land, is easy to imagine as she writes with vivid imagery and heartfelt honesty. Her rich vocabulary rolls as easily as the Prairie hills she describes, giving both those who know this kind of life and those who don’t inviting lessons in family and prairie life. You’ll easily be drawn into this delightful and engaging read."—Val Byrd, Ministry Leader and Life & Leadership Coach, LifeLinks International Fellowship

"Luminous and timely, Maria Enns’s work traces a year-long inquiry into seasonal plant change on uncultivated pastureland on the Canadian Great Plains. Engaging a practice of attunement and care, plants are found generative of cultural, ancestral, and spiritual knowledge. The book blends field guide, nature writing, and personal memoir, revealing self-renewal and soulful nourishment through intimate engagement with land that is active, instructive presence.Urgent yet meditative, Enns reminds us that what remains undescribed is always most vulnerable to erasure; it is in these margins of remaining native grassland that new awareness and responsibilities may take root. Back in the Hills: A Healing Year on the Prairie opens eyes and hearts to ways in which our lives, with their joys and sorrows, freedoms and limitations, are woven into the realm of the sacred through the sensory wonder of the prairie landscape.—Valerie Triggs, PhD, Professor Emeritus, University of Regina