Bestselling local author Elinor Florence will sign copies of her new book Wildwood at Four Points Books in Invermere on Saturday, May 2.

Wildwood is a contemporary novel with a historical twist. A single mother from Phoenix, Arizona inherits an abandoned farm in northern Alberta on condition that she and her little girl survive there for one year, off the grid. Molly Bannister faces many challenges, but she is inspired by the journal she finds in the old farmhouse written by her great-aunt, the original homesteader.

Wildwood was originally published in 2018 but the new edition, complete with brand new cover, is being relaunched due to the success of Florence’s novel, Finding Flora. That novel, about women homesteaders in Alberta prairie in 1905, debuted one year ago in the number one spot for Canadian Fiction on the national bestseller list.

“I knew Flora would be popular with readers who have homesteading ancestry, but I never dreamed it would strike a chord with Canadians right across the country,” Florence said.

Finding Flora has been on the national bestseller list 36 times since then and made CBC’s top ten sales list in 2025. It garnered rave reviews and was discussed at dozens of book clubs across Canada.

The publisher will also reissue Florence’s debut novel Bird’s Eye View in November. This is a meticulously researched wartime novel about a farm girl from Saskatchewan who joins the Royal Canadian Air Force in the Second World War and is sent to England, where she serves as an aerial photographic interpreter.

Meanwhile, Florence is not resting on her laurels. She is currently hard at work on a brand new novel, Touching Grass, to appear in April 2027. This novel, about a young English woman who travels to Western Canada in search of her missing sister, is set in the immense rolling grasslands between Maple Creek and Medicine Hat in 1890.

“I’m passionately invested in Canadian history, and my roots are buried deep in prairie agriculture,” said Florence, who grew up on a grain farm near North Battleford, Saskatchewan. Florence also has Indigenous heritage and is a member of the the Métis Nation of B.C.

A career journalist who worked for newspapers in all four Western provinces, spent eight years writing for Reader’s Digest Canada, and formerly published the Columbia Valley Pioneer in Invermere, Florence did not turn her hand to fiction until she retired in 2010.

“It was a difficult transition from never making anything up, to making everything up!” she  said. She credits her background for her commitment to fact-based fiction rather than fantasy. “My goal is to educate as well as entertain.”

Florence will be at Four Points Books from 2 to 5 p.m. on Saturday, May 2 where she will sign copies of both Finding Flora and Wildwood. You can preorder your copy of Wildwood now from any bookseller, including Coles in Tamarack Centre, and Huckleberry Books in Cranbrook.

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