With the generous support of Goose Lane Editions, the Princeton Branch of the Okanagan Regional Library will host Vancouver writer Arley McNeney on November 29 at 7 p.m. This is the last stop on her Kettle Valley Tour, which began in Cranbrook. Ms. McNeney has been stopping in communities on and off the Kettle Valley route, talking about historical fiction and some of the real BC places and events which shaped her novel The Time We All Went Marching.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Storm-stayed on a Kettle Valley Railway train, bound less for glory than for an uncertain welcome, Edie attempts to wrestle down her demons. Suffocating in a bad marriage in 1940s British Columbia, Edie’s running back to the one place she couldn’t wait to leave behind. Seduced by her husband’s stories of Depression-era work camps and the doomed On To Ottawa Trek of ‘35, Edie followed Slim from mine to mine for a decade, caring for their son, Belly, beneath the flimsy shelter of canvas tents. Vivid and evocative, with rich, convincing characters, The Time We All Went Marching is an episodic novel of storytelling, memory, and imagination — set in a period in history rarely explored in fiction. Skilfully deploying the history of the On To Ottawa movement, when over a thousand men from relief camps attempted to protest their brutal conditions, Arley McNeney illuminates the human struggle to fight for survival — no matter what the cost.
ARLEY MCNENEY’s first novel, Post, was a finalist for the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, Best First Novel, Canadian and the Caribbean, and was long listed for both the Saskatchewan Best First Novel and for the ReLit awards. An elite athlete, McNeney played on Canada’s national wheelchair basketball team from 2001 to 2007, winning two World Championships and a bronze medal at the 2004 Paralympics.
Join author BC writer Arley McNeney as she reads from her new book and talks about the real-life events which inspired it.
November 29, 7 p.m., at the Princeton Library.