Looking forward to meeting readers and reconnecting with local authors. We have a strong, talented group here in the Tri-Cities, Fraser Valley, and it’s been a while since I’ve ventured out into the world.
Vancouver Witches Beware The Hunter: Hexborn, JP McLean
The “Mistress of Complications” returns with a meticulously plotted urban fantasy/supernatural thriller. Its hallmark, an intricate web of magical systems and relationships in a well-developed fantastical world. Yet at its heart, it’s about people we care about, how they live, love, and survive the forces of evil who would see them destroyed.
In this sequel to The Never Witch, JP McLean offers an ingenious illustration of the dangers of xenophobia. Two interwoven subplots converge at the climax in an epic battle to destroy a near-unstoppable assassin whose goal is to annihilate the Hexborn. That’s what this group of young soldiers call themselves. Others call them cursed. They are mixed blood, carrying the DNA of both witches and warlocks and persecuted by both, who fear their power. The Hexborn work like an intelligence team. They are the hunted hunting the hunter—their mission to execute this “killing machine.”
Meanwhile, in Vancouver, the sparks between Adeline (a magically barren witch carrying warlock magic) and Luke (a sexy warlock determined to teach her how to control her magic while winning her heart) explode into a fiery romance. The couple can now communicate telepathically and spend hours at his nature sanctuary where Adeline learns to draw her power from trees and hold it in check as Luke tests her. Adeline and Luke are two of the narrators. The third is Mia.
One of the leaders of the Hexborn, Mia is tasked with protecting Alice, a twelve-year-old telepath tied to the hunter’s signet ring. Alice leads the group across Canada as they pursue this monster who’s murdering innocent families. Adeline can not only hear Luke, she can hear Alice, and this is how the two entities converge to join forces against the hunter.
McLean transforms Vancouver into a magical underworld reminiscent of the Harry Potter stories. Gastown’s Arcane Alley “oozed a quiet menace aimed at non-magicals. Anyone who resisted their influence would find themselves in an empty alley with an overwhelming compulsion to leave.” Arcane Alley is where witches and warlocks go to buy supplies but here also “stolen artifacts, questionable potions, and magical tools of the trade—many fake—change hands.”
Adeline and her witchy sister, Sarah, are combing through archives at The Sanctuary, researching magically barren witches and telepathy as Adeline’s health declines. Having mixed magic is a dangerous and relatively unknown proposition. Could it kill her? Perhaps. The stakes are high.
Yet, there are moments to sink into the lushness of nature, the excitement of love, the tastes and textures of food, and to chuckle at Zane’s snarky t-shirts: “I didn’t mean to push your buttons. I was just looking for mute.”
Fans of Deborah Harkness (The Discovery of Witches) will appreciate McLean’s multi-faceted magical universe where a desire for the freedom to live pushes against cultural transgressions, rules, and prohibitions in an effort to alter the status quo.
McLean’s imagination is at its peak; her writing cinematic and sensory, fuelled by relentless action and sustained with tension and intensity. This is her third supernatural fantasy thriller series. She’s been the recipient of numerous honours for her Dark Dreams series and her six-book Gift Legacy series. Among them: an Eric Hoffer, CIBA and National Indie Excellence Awards, the UK Wishing Shelf Book Awards, and the Whistler independent Book Awards. McLean lives on Denman Island and is a favourite at Vancouver Island markets and festivals.
A Living Photograph on the Power of Fate
Torlée’s third and latest novel offers glimpses into the art world, exotic locales (decor, culture, and cuisines), philosophical concepts, and the interweaving of lives and histories to illustrate one universal theme: the complexity of motherhood.
Part One introduces several disparate characters who revolve around each other like planets in the night sky. At times, it’s hard to keep them straight. Twenty-six-year-old Aiden Quinn, the protagonist, is a despondent artist. His aunt, the woman who raised him when his mother couldn’t, has just died and, in his grief, he’s kicked out his girlfriend. A photograph in a magazine inspires a meeting in Vancouver with a man with an uncanny resemblance to Aiden’s long-deceased father. Turns out Uncle Stephen is “one of Canada’s best-known painters.” When Stephen realizes his nephew’s artistic potential, he offers him a chance at a new life and Aiden accepts, moving from gritty Downtown Eastside Vancouver to the glamour and glitz of life working with the El Hassans.
This is Torlée’s third book and, although it’s not described as a series, each of these character-driven books builds on another. Stephen was introduced in her first book, The Way Things Fall: a novel. We also meet Gabrielle Mazhar, an unhinged horsewoman who’s inherited an Egyptian stud farm; along with the perfect family, rich, hotelier Dominic El Hassan, his beautiful wife Amina, and their adorable children. Amina is the centre of Book Two, In Love With The Night. I’ve not read the first two books and was able to follow the story, but it would have been richer and simpler to digest if I had, due to the number of characters and detailed backstories. However, a few chapters in, things gel as we begin to travel between countries and locations.
In Part Two, we find ourselves in South America. Dominic’s in Patagonia with his perfect family. He takes his rather psychic son, Luka, to the Atacama Desert in northern Chile to view the night sky, and on their return, they meet up with Gabrielle who’s flown to Patagonia to check on horses. This chance meeting inspires a diabolical plan that propels us into Part Three. Now, we’re in Morocco, where we glimpse the true natures of our flawed characters and the lengths they’re willing to go to get what they desire. Here too, we meet Fate: “A living, breathing force out there orchestrating the details of our lives. It separates people and it brings them together.”
Dominic, who feels like a second protagonist, has an ethereal quality and is able to articulate this concept of Fate perfectly.
“Through the weaving of the countless paths of fate, the lives of the three of them under the stars tonight, the lives of people they loved in the past and would love in the future—all were meant to intersect, fuse inextricably together.”
It is the desire to be a mother that fuels Gabrielle’s criminality, and the natural force of motherhood that propels pregnant Amina to save her daughter. Aiden cannot forgive his mother for disappearing and leaving her sister to mother him, even though she’s still alive and has been desperately trying to reconnect.
To summarize this story does it an injustice. Torlée’s a masterful writer and her rich and rhythmic, cinematic prose propels us through art galleries and exotic locations into these dramatically twisted lives. The book is like a living photograph—the reader becomes immersed in the intrinsic beauty of the far landscape then zooms into the quiet closeness of a character’s soul in an intimate moment. Through photographs and paintings we are drawn in. For example, take this description of Italy, drawn from a photograph.
“Here was the house itself, a fading creamy yellow, caper flowers growing tenaciously in cracks of stone, frothing mounds of wild lavender in the gardens at the side. The pictures showed terraced vineyards and lilac skies, the medieval towers of the walled city in the distance.”
Torlée loves stars, the concept of fate, travel and the desert—motifs that define her books. In fact, she met her husband Jürgen in Cairo, on the edge of the desert with the pyramids in sight. They now live in midtown Toronto.
Lovers of travel and culture will become immersed; in fact, this would be a good book to pack on your journeys. Armchair travellers will love the tangible sketches of Chile, Egypt, Morocco, even Toronto and Vancouver, and the in-depth emotional journeys of these divergent, yet intimately connected souls, as they take A Long Walk With Fate.
Back to the Land with The Theory of Crows
This book is one of the readings at North Island Distance Education School in British Columbia, Canada, for English First Peoples 12. It reads like a young adult novel, which is not surprising since David A. Robertson won his accolades for children’s writing and graphic novels—twice he won the Governor General’s Literary Award, also the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award, and the Writer’s Union of Canada Freedom to Read award. Published in 2022, this is his first adult novel.
I found his writing detailed, repetitive, and slow-paced (he did this, she did that). He tells more than he shows, and it lacks the edgy, lyrical style I’ve come to appreciate in books by other Indigenous authors like Cherie Dimaline, Eden Robinson, Louise Erdrich, and Drew Hayden Taylor, though it is honest and does reveal his feelings and experiences.
Forty-year-old Matthew feels empty and estranged from his wife and sixteen-year-old daughter. He suffers with anxiety and is weaning himself off a longtime Xanax addiction. To fill the void, he sends some flirty texts to a co-worker—that’s it, no sex, just flirty texts. His daughter Holly (birth name Hallelujah) who suffers with anxiety and teenage angst, discovers his texts and calls him on it.
“And if you want me to stop drinking this much, then I’ll make you a deal: how abut you stop texting some bitch that isn’t my mother!”
The story is divided into two parts. Part One details the problems plaguing this Winnipeg inner city family of Cree-Scottish heritage and goes on a little too long for this reader. It takes a family tragedy to shock them into action. Matthew realizes he must go back to the land where his father grew up on the old family trapline, and Holly realizes she must come along.
Robertson is a member of Norway House Cree Nation, and he drew inspiration from his own life for this novel. It reads like a fictionalized account of his memoir, Black Water, where he writes about a trip to Norway House to deal with his own mental health issues, specifically anxiety. Robertson went accompanied by his Cree father, who like Charlie McIvor in the story, is a minister. In The Theory of Crows, Robertson changes the focus to reflect estranged relationships within his own family, especially his eldest daughter.
Part Two (Chapter 17) ramps up into a survival story and that’s where the action begins. The writing style becomes more poetic too.
“They flew through the clearing (the crows) like shards of night fallen to earth, then landed on trees.”
I’d personally liked to have seen the first half condensed and the second half expanded. Most of us understand the estrangement between fathers and teenaged daughters but wilderness camping is more elusive. Norway House lies five hundred miles north of Winnipeg and was a Hudson’s Bay Company depot in the 19th Century. Matthew and Holly, both who’ve been raised in Winnipeg and have few outdoor skills, aren’t prepared or equipped to deal, which ups the stakes. Fortunately, Holly is a water-polo champion, something that saves these inexperienced city folks, when Matthew takes a canoe out on the river and makes a wrong turn. Mosquitoes and black flies are mentioned but I had to imagine what it was really like from my own experiences in Northern Ontario.
The story is split between their points-of-view. Unable to speak to his daughter, but desperate to let her know how much he cares, Matthew writes a series of letters to Holly which reveal his backstory and are woven throughout the text.
Several themes reverberate through the story: identity and belonging; the legacy of residential schools; the impact of Christianity; self harm; intergenerational trauma; Indigenous girls at risk; blood memory; and especially connection to the land.
The book has a wonderful cover and title: The Theory of Crows, but it’s not until the very end that we’re given a glimpse into that theory.
“Your moshom, he told me about this. He told me that you remembered the land, even if you’d never been on the land before. Your grandfather used to say that the land could remember you. It works the same way with crows, Hallelujah. They remembered him, they would remember me, and they remember you. They pass these things down through the generations.”
His graphic novels are intriguing
Wildwood: Exploring Northern Alberta History at a Critical Time
I was so impressed with Florence’s historical Can Lit novel, Finding Flora (2025), I put Wildwood on my “to be read” list. I was not the only one impressed. The novel was so successful—debuting as a #1 National Bestseller in Canadian Fiction and remaining on the list for 27 consecutive weeks—Florence’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, contracted her prior work. Wildwood was originally published by Dundurn Press in 2018. The updated novel is available now, with a gorgeous cover, and is just as remarkable as Finding Flora.
This is a story of grim determination and deep love. The love between a single mother and her young daughter, as well as the love of two Irish women for the land—a great aunt and a niece who share the same name. Mary Margaret Bannister. Our broke, jobless protagonist, nicknamed Molly, is living in hot, polluted Phoenix, Arizona, with her four-year-old daughter, Bridget, when she’s notified of her great aunt’s death. According to the will, if Molly can survive a year living at Wildwood—an abandoned farmhouse without plumbing or electricity deep in the backwoods north of Edmonton—she will inherit the deed to the property.
To complicate things, wee Bridget suffers with selective mutism. She’s never spoken to anyone but Molly and is under an expensive psychiatrist’s care in Phoenix. Through research, Molly determines the 1,280 acre property is worth $1,472,000.00, and all she has to do is spend one year there. Four seasons. How hard can it be? After that, she can sell out, return to Phoenix, and purchase the help her daughter needs. What would you do?
Obviously, Molly rises to the challenge, making Wildwood a Canadian survival story and an amazing backwoods adventure. This brilliant premise alone hooked me. The novel is “jam-packed”, pun intended, with practical homesteading know-how, like living off the land with a limited budget and what to buy on monthly bulk shopping trips. Molly, the American accountant who’s used to having a paycheck, childcare, and takeout, and who’s never baked in her life, is almost too adept at this lifestyle switch. Before we know it, she’s baking bread, cookies, and berry pies in the old wood stove and putting up preserves. She’s created an elaborate laundry procedure using a scrub board and manual ringer, and they’re bathing in the kitchen tub.
The tale is enhanced by first-person writings from her great aunt’s journal. Molly discovers “a slender, unmarked volume covered with heavy, black-textured cloth” and Florence cleverly weaves these intimate, historical passages from 1924 into the story. Mary Margaret provides the homesteader’s perspective and a glimpse into harrowing, historic Alberta.
Her meticulous writing is flush with sensory details and is quietly spectacular.
—Ottawa review of books, june 2026
Florence, who graduated with degrees in English and journalism, is an obsessive researcher who spent eight years writing for Reader’s Digest Canada and published her own award-winning community newspaper. Her meticulous writing is flush with sensory details and is quietly spectacular. It’s a thick book—a year on an abandoned homestead offers much fodder— but is a quick and gentle, easygoing read, apart from the odd raging mama grizzly or near-death experience during a brutal Northern Alberta blizzard! I hasten to say it’s the kind of book that brings comfort—perhaps because you’re not the one having to wade through snowdrifts to dump the chamber pot in the outhouse in the dead of winter.
Florence, who’s a member of the Metis First Nation of B.C., writes a wonderful young Cree girl into the story and touches on Indigenous issues through Wynona’s circumstances. As occurred historically, it’s Wynona who helps and supports the inexperienced, naïve yet feisty, Molly as she embarks on this perilous adventure. Add to that a brush with Alberta fracking, an unscrupulous lawyer, a handsome neighbour, and you’ve got a topical, eloquent adventure. Wildwood makes a fabulous summer read.
As published in The Ottawa Review of Books, June 2026
Love and Death on the Canadian Prairie
Destined to become a Canadian literary classic, Finding Flora chronicles the bittersweet journey of twenty-four-year-old, red-haired, Scottish immigrant, Flora Craigie. Readers can’t help but root for this young, feisty hero whose first act of rebellion is to leap into the darkness from a moving train to escape her new, sick, predatory husband.
“Bracing herself against the jerk and pitch of the train, Flora leaped into the darkness” (3).
Hoodwinked by Hector Mackle, an unscrupulous land agent with the CPR, Flora marries in Scotland, only to discover his wicked nature four weeks later when he tries to strangle her for refusing his advances. Mackle’s been too sick to consummate the marriage, which is a blessing, as Flora learns when she lands in Alberta.
“The symptoms you’re describing sound like syphilis,” Nurse Godwin reveals. Wicked indeed.
This is a hero’s journey where allies and enemies appear at unprecedented times. A kind of feminist Gothic novel, it’s a tale of women helping women facing adversity. Besides confrontations with entitled men of power and privilege, the women struggle against the Canadian Prairie—as brutal an antagonist as the depraved husband who offers a reward for his wayward wife. She is, after all, legally his.
This plucky heroine continues to attract angels—her homesteading female neighbours—in what becomes known as “Ladysville”. At a time when women are deemed inferior and cannot vote (1905-1907) these rebellious women face the ire of the male-dominated community because they refuse to marry or stay silent. Allowed to homestead because the men assume they’ll fail, they face male ire when they make a success of their homesteads during the allotted two-year time frame. How? By helping each other through all the Prairie hurls at them—freezing winters, malevolent hail, sickness, politics, laws, even thugs intent on burning them out.
“Ignorance is fatal, especially out here” (150).
These are wonderfully realistic characters. Among them are a Welsh widow who’s immigrated with her children, so her son can escape the coal mine that killed his father; The Chicken Ladies, a couple of Boston teachers who’ve come to Canada to escape persecution when rumours circulate that they’re more than friends; and Jessie McDonald, a fiercely independent Métis woman who hunts and trains wild horses rather than put plough to land.
Finding Flora is an homage to all homesteaders, those brave souls who laid the foundation for the Western Canada that we know and love today.”
—Eleanor Florence
Florence, who grew up in Saskatchewan, has Scottish-Cree heritage and is a member of the Métis Nation of British Columbia. She dedicates this book to her Métis great-grandmother, whose name, not so coincidentally, was Jessie McDonald. The story is one of adoration, and we find our ancestors in these resilient, fighting women who refuse to back down. Whether attacking the sod to plant a garden, chinking the log cabin bare-handed with horse manure and mud, plucking wild oat seed before spreading the precious wheat, or any other of her daily Herculean tasks, Flora finds herself persevering and falling in love with this land.
Woven among the fictional characters are well-described historical characters: Irene Parlby, Alberta women’s rights activist; larger than life figure CPR president William Van Horne, and Alix Westhead, a rich, powerful woman for whom the village of Alix, Alberta was named, and whom Van Horne allegedly had a dalliance with.
Frank Oliver of Edmonton, who served as the federal Minister of the Interior, makes a damnable villain—especially with his frat boy comments: “I jollied her along because she’s such a juicy little tart, with that mane of red hair. Some man will be lucky to get a piece of that” (281.) Ah, just what a woman wants to hear when she’s eavesdropping. It’s Oliver who pushes to expropriate all of Ladysville, and harasses Flora via his agent, Mr. Payne (the perfect name for this villain.) Several real life minor characters also pepper the pages, giving a sense of reality to the homesteaders’ plight. This is history as you’ve never read it.
But don’t despair, this is a feminist tale and there’s power in sisterhood. And for those of you who crave romance, there’s a hint of that too.
Florence is a brilliant writer, the story superbly structured—she plotted the whole thing before filling in the details—the pacing relentless, the drama so thick it will tie you in knots. Yet, it’s so well written, it flows quickly and easily. Her lyrical prose describes the Prairie, both its gifts and its scourges, with imagery so vivid and cinematic we can’t help but wish for Finding Flora to become a film or CBC special. Finding Flora is as much a tribute to the Canadian Prairie as Anne of Green Gables is to P.E.I.
The book is incredibly well-researched—Florence includes a two-page bibliography and a Reading Group Guide for book clubs. She read some sixty books about homesteading in Canada before beginning to write. Perhaps, this practice grew from her earlier career in journalism. Florence worked for newspapers from Manitoba to British Columbia and even published her own award-winning community paper. She also spent eight years writing for Reader’s Digest Canada. Bird’s Eye View, her first novel, was a national bestseller, and Wildwood, her second, was featured in Kobo’s “100 Most Popular Canadian Books of All Time.” This is a woman to watch, this book a pearl of perfection.
Elinor Florence was overjoyed when Finding Flora debuted on the national bestseller list for Canadian Fiction in the number one spot and remained on the national bestseller list for thirty weeks plus during 2025. It’s also a Heather’s Pick for the Indigo, Chapters, and Coles book chain and was recently named one of Indigo’s Top Ten Best Books of 2025.
As published in The Ottawa Review of Books, March 2026.
