The Temptations of Big Bear by Rudy Wiebe (1973) — A novel about Big Bear, the Cree chief who resisted signing Treaty 6 in the 1870s and whose territory covered much of what is now central Alberta. Wiebe reconstructs the collision between the Plains Cree world and the advancing Canadian government with the specificity of a historian and the imagination of a novelist. Essential reading for understanding the Indigenous history of the Edmonton region.
Coyote's Morning Cry by Yvonne Johnson and Rudy Wiebe (1998) — Part memoir, part investigation, this book follows Yvonne Johnson, a Cree woman and great-great-great-granddaughter of Big Bear, through her childhood in Alberta and into the prison system. Unflinching and important; it changed public conversation in Canada about Indigenous incarceration.
Edmonton: A History by J.G. MacGregor — A thorough popular history of the city from the fur trade era through the twentieth century. Not literature, but reliable and readable; useful for anyone who wants context before visiting Fort Edmonton Park or the Royal Alberta Museum.
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz by Mordecai Richler (1959) — Set in Montreal but worth mentioning because Richler's sharp-eyed portrait of immigrant ambition and prairie-to-city mobility captures something true about the Jewish and Eastern European communities that built cities like Edmonton in the early twentieth century.