Bestselling Canadian historical novelist Elinor Florence will be speaking at the Cochrane Public Library on April 19.
Florence grew up on a Saskatchewan grain farm that was also a former Second Word War training airfield near North Battleford. After earning her English degree at the University of Saskatchewan, she studied journalism at Carleton University. She launched her career at her hometown newspaper titled The Battlefords Advertiser-Post, followed by the Western Producer in Saskatoon, the Red Deer Advocate in Alberta, the Winnipeg Sun in Manitoba and The Province in Vancouver.
Published in 2014, her best selling novel Bird’s Eye View tells the story of a farm girl from Saskatchewan who joins the Royal Canadian Air Force, goes overseas to England and serves as an aerial photographic interpreter. There she spies on the enemy from the sky, using only her magnifying glass and her stereoscope.
Her new novel released in February of 2018 titled Wildwood, features a single mother from the big city who inherits an abandoned farm in the remote backwoods near Peace River, on condition that she lives there off the grid for one year. The woman struggles to survive without plumbing or electricity, inspired by a journal she finds in the old farmhouse, belonging to the original homesteader.
Florence, who now resides in Inveremere B.C., will be using vintage photographs in an hour-long slideshow explaining the importance of women in uniform and aerial photographic interpretation during the Second World War. Her fascinating presentations have won rave reviews from groups across Western Canada and it is one of special interest to seniors, veterans, book club members and anyone interested in Canada’s proud wartime history and the role of women.
Florence who has previously only driven through Cochrane, said she is excited to give her presentation at the Library, and hopes the people who are present come away with a positive experience.
“I haven’t been in Cochrane before and I’m coming because I was invited by the Cochrane Library. I have a few fans in Cochrane, there’s one guy from there who is always emailing everyone raving about my book which is very nice,” Florence said.
“I’m very excited. Invermere isn’t very far away so we drive through Cochrane all the time and I have two daughters who live in Calgary so my husband and I do a lot of travelling back and forth. But yes I have never been to the Library so I’m very excited for that, as well as getting the pleasure to have an opportunity to meet all my fans in Cochrane.”
“My presentation is educational in a way but it’s mostly entertaining and most people who see if have given me positive feedback and that it was fantastic and that we don’t hear enough about our own Canadian history.”
“The aspect of Bird’s Eye View that people enjoy is that it’s the only novel written about a Canadian woman in uniform. There were 50 thousand of them in World War II but you never really hear about them and people love that. With my new book Wildwood, Cochrane will be the first group I give my presentation for so I’m hoping from good feedback from the audience. But what I’m really hoping for is some increased knowledge of our pioneer history in Alberta and what the homesteaders went through.”
Florence’s presentation will be free and open to the public and will begin at 6:30 p.m.
