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B.C. author pens epic B.C. novel
Like a clearcut mountainside, there isn’t too much left in the B.C. woods for a writer to harvest, but a new novel from Fernie-based Oolichan Books salvages a few sound logs from the slash pile to build a tale of loss and liberation, betrayal and forgiveness. Loggers’ Daughters, the debut novel of B.C. writer Maureen Brownlee, was released by the independent publisher last week.
Herself a logger’s daughter, Brownlee writes what she knows and what she knows is British Columbia, specifically the forested slopes of the Rocky Mountain trench and the logging communities that inhabit them.
“This is a novel about people at the periphery,” she said, “about families who spent their working lives surviving the boom and bust cycles of the forest industry.”
Set in 1983 the characters are buoyed and fractured by the tumult of the times: women’s libbers are marching, anarchists are plotting, timber supply is dwindling and loggers are being forced further and further from their homes.
Renowned west coast author Andreas Schroeder calls it an “epic novel” that will “surely become a Canadian classic.”
Spanning the province, from the streets of Vancouver and the halls of UBC to a frozen haul road near Fort Nelson, Loggers’ Daughters is a novel about change. Changing times, changing circumstances, changing people. It is also the story of one specific, memorable, logging family, four siblings born of an alcoholic father and a melodramatic mother. When Myra Brennan dies without leaving a will, her adult children are thrust into a divisive conflict. Negotiating a mutually acceptable solution is complicated by their history of avoiding just such joint decision-making. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way out this time.
A long-time resident of the interior, Brownlee has lived and worked in several BC communities. A former journalist, her writing education has included workshops at Island Mountain School of the Arts in Wells, Fernie Writers Conference, and Sage Hill Writing Experience in Saskatchewan. She studied English, History and Creative Writing, first through B.C.’s Open University then at UNBC. She lives on a farm near Valemount and is at work on her second novel.
Brownlee will be in Fernie on Saturday, November 16 at Infinitea at 7:30 p.m. She will be joined by Kim McCullough (Clearwater, Coteau Books) and Jerry Auld (Short Peaks, Imaginary Mountain Surveyors). The trio will engage in a panel discussion with local author Angie Abdou, discussing the challenges of putting creative work out into the world.
