At the risk of mixing Biblical metaphors, Jacob’s Wound, the new book from prize-winning Saskatchewan writer Trevor Herriot (author of River in a Dry Land), is something of a coat of many colours. Composed of nature writing, philosophy, religious history, journalism, and memoir, the book is an exploration of the “spirit of wildness” and an evocation of an Earth-based spirituality rooted firmly in Judeo-Christian monotheism. Unfortunately, the diverse strands of the book fail to coalesce into a compelling whole.

At its best, Jacob’s Wound (the title is a reference to the story of Jacob and Esau in Genesis, which Herriot sees as crucial to our understanding of the cultural separation from, and conciliation with, the wild) demonstrates again that Herriot is one of Canada’s finest prose stylists. When writing about “The Land,” as he calls the 70 acres of the Qu’Appelle valley that he and his family have owned for the past decade, his prose is intoxicating and vivifying, bringing life to “hillside, meadow and coulee.”

When Herriot writes of his own spiritual searching, his pilgrimages into the wilderness and into the church, and his encounters with Brother James (a Benedictine hermit), the reader is drawn into his doubts and realizations. When he draws together the strands of the wilderness in both the three faiths of Abraham (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) and Eastern faiths, his arguments are compelling and enlightening, underscoring what is perhaps the fundamental question of our time: “Why does religion divide when it should unite?”

Later in the book, however, Herriot loses focus on his central thematic concerns and the book becomes mired in journalistic, less personally galvanizing explorations of such topical concerns as the crushing effect of multinational agribusiness on Prairie society, the troubling growth and acceptance of genetically modified organisms, and the legacy of native residential schools. These are all, needless to say, important issues, but Herriot’s treatment of them is flat, making the subjects seem out of place. More critically, the shift in tone and the loss of passion blunts the impact of the more powerful early chapters.