A new wartime novel by journalist Elinor Florence of Invermere explores the little-known topic of aerial photographic interpretation, and tells the story through Canadian eyes.

Elinor is the former owner and publisher of the Columbia Valley Pioneer in Invermere, and former Kootenay Business Magazine’s Top 10 Business People for 2010.

(http://kootenaybiz.com/10people/article/elinor-florence)

Since selling the newspaper, she turned to fiction and her first novel will be published this month by Dundurn Press in Toronto.

Bird’s Eye View is about a young woman from Saskatchewan whose hometown becomes an air training base. Fired with patriotism, she joins the air force herself – one of 50,000 Canadian women who enlisted to support the fighting men.

Rose Jolliffe travels overseas and becomes an interpreter of aerial photographs, spying on the enemy from the sky, searching out camouflaged munitions factories and bomb targets on the continent. She keeps in touch with the home front through frequent letters from her mother.

And throughout the war, she has a bird’s eye view of the Canadian experience – at Dieppe, in the skies over Germany, on the beaches of Normandy – and finally, when our country shared in the Allied victory.

Florence grew up on a former wartime airfield near North Battleford, Saskatchewan, worked for newspapers in all four western provinces, and was a regular contributor to Reader’s Digest before operating the newspaper in Invermere.

Elinor also writes a weekly blog called Wartime Wednesdays, telling true stories of Canadians during wartime. You can see it here: www.elinorflorence.com/blog.

Bird’s Eye View is her first novel. It will be available on October 25 in bookstores, and as an ebook.

Elinor will be signing copies of Bird’s Eye View at Pynelogs Cultural Centre in Invermere from 7 to 9 p.m. on November 14, and at Lotus Books in Cranbrook from 2 to 4 p.m. on November 22.

For more information, visit Elinor’s website at www.elinorflorence.com.

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