#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Co-winner of the 2024 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature • Winner of the Jim Deva Prize for Writing That Provokes (part of the BC and Yukon Book Prizes) • Shortlisted for the 2024 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize • Finalist for the 2024 Governor General's Literary Award for Nonfiction • Shortlisted for the 2025 OLA Evergreen Award • Longlisted for Canada Reads 2025

When matriarchs begin to disappear, there is a choice to either step into the places they left behind, or to craft a new space.

Helen Knott’s debut memoir, In My Own Moccasins, wowed reviewers, award juries, and readers alike with its profoundly honest and moving account of addiction, intergenerational trauma, resilience, and survival. Now, in her highly anticipated second book, Knott returns with a chronicle of grief, love, and legacy.

Having lost both her mom and grandmother in just over six months, forced to navigate the fine lines between matriarchy, martyrdom, and codependency, Knott realizes she must let go, not just of the women who raised her, but of the woman she thought she was.

Woven into the pages are themes of mourning, sobriety through loss, and generational dreaming. Becoming a Matriarch is charted with poetic insights, sass, humour, and heart, taking the reader over the rivers and mountains of Dane Zaa territory in Northeastern British Columbia, along the cobbled streets of Antigua, Guatemala, and straight to the heart of what matriarchy truly means. This is a journey through pain, on the way to becoming.