Author Jan DeGrass will launch her new book of stories, Temptations and Travels, that are part imagination, part memory in the natural beauty of the Sunshine Coast Botanical Gardens. Temptations and Travels is a collection of stories that wander freely between fiction and lived experience. Here are tales of travels, trials and temptations. Some tales grow from remembered journeys; others from moments half-forgotten but reshaped and embellished by the storyteller.
A medieval monk is sorely tempted by a visit from a mysterious woodland woman. The author travels across the stark, volatile landscapes of Iceland, where volcanoes and rushing rivers invite wonder and introspection. A mother and daughter guard secrets from one another—each believing silence is an act of love. Elsewhere, life’s lessons are learned in unlikely forms: from a curious emu, from chance meetings with passengers on a train or from a handsome stranger in a remote British Columbia gold-rush town. Together they form a rich mosaic of travel, reflection, and the small
temptations that test human nature.
The dedicated authors from the Mini One-Day Writer’s Retreat will be reading from their manuscripts at the SCWES May Meeting, Sunday, May 31st, 2-4:30 pm, featuring Joan Fletcher’s launch of her scifi novel, “The Data Raiders.”
Local author Marion McKinnon Crook reads from her new book- Bloomsbury to Barkerville: The Life of Florence Wilson.
From the literary circles of Charles Dickens to gold-rush saloons in the Cariboo, this remarkable true story chronicles the fascinating life and intrepid spirit of Florence Wilson (1823–1902).
In 1862 Florence Wilson embarked on the SS Tynemouth, a bride ship destined for the Colony of British Columbia. She was one of sixty women travelling halfway around the world to become the wives of miners in the Cariboo gold rush. But unbeknownst to her fellow passengers, Florence had no intention of marrying; she was there to seek her own fortune. By the time she set sail, Florence had already experienced more life than most women and men twice her age. She had grown up as part of the gentry in central London’s Bloomsbury district, where she moved in the same literary circles as Charles Dickens and became a published poet. After being cheated of her inheritance, she fell into debilitating poverty—until news of the gold rush in Western Canada gave her the opportunity to change her life.
From poet to prospector to entrepreneur, Florence is best remembered in the frontier town of Barkerville, BC. She was the heart of the community, bringing entertainment and culture to a town dominated by transient male miners. In Barkerville, her fortunes rose, fell, and literally went up in flames in the great fire of 1868. But she always rebuilt and regrouped. Bloomsbury to Barkerville is a sweeping yet intimate portrait of an intrepid, ambitious woman.
