Elinor Florence

June 2024

Elinor Florence grew up on a farm near North Battleford, Saskatchewan and worked as a journalist for the next thirty years, at newspapers including the Western Producer in Saskatoon, the Red Deer Advocate, the Winnipeg Sun, and the Vancouver Province. In 1996 she moved with her young family to the mountain resort of Invermere, B.C., where she spent the next eight years as a regular writer for Reader’s Digest Canada before publishing her own community newspaper, the Columbia Valley Pioneer. After leaving journalism, Elinor turned to historical fiction. Her first novel Bird’s Eye View, about a Saskatchewan farm girl who joins the air force in the Second World War and becomes an interpreter of aerial photographs, was published by Dundurn Press in 2014 and became a Globe & Mail bestseller. That was followed by My Favourite Veterans, a non-fiction anthology of interviews Elinor completed with veterans during her research. A second novel titled Wildwood was also published by Dundurn Press in 2018, about a single mother who inherits an abandoned farm in northern Alberta on condition she and her little girl spend one year living there off the grid. Wildwood was named by Kobo as one of the most popular Canadian books of all times. Elinor’s love of history comes honestly since her ancestors include Scottish fur traders, Northwest Mounted Police officers, and indigenous women. She appears regularly at public events where she speaks about the inspiration behind her work. She has also written a monthly blog for the past ten years, Letters From Windermere. Elinor is now working on her third novel, about women homesteaders in Western Canada. You may sign up for her blog and read more about her books at www.elinorflorence.com.