About Elinor Florence

I live in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, although I grew up on a prairie grain farm, a former Second World War training airport, and my rural roots run deep. I still own farmland in Saskatchewan and visit the Land of the Living Skies, as they call it, every summer. I also have Indigenous ancestors, and I’m a proud member of the Métis Nation of B.C.

After completing journalism school, I landed my first job as a farm reporter and went on to work for daily papers in all four Western provinces.

Weary of city life, my husband and I moved with our children from Vancouver to the tiny mountain resort of Invermere. I spent the next eight years working from home for Reader’s Digest, writing articles about subjects ranging from lost loggers to liver transplants. I then jumped at the chance to purchase my local newspaper, and turned The Columbia Valley Pioneer into an award-winning small town staple.

But my greatest challenge remained: to write a novel. Inspired by my mother’s wartime stories, I tackled my first historical novel, Bird’s Eye View, about a prairie farm girl who joins the air force during the Second World War. To my delight, it became a Canadian bestseller.

My second novel, Wildwood, tells the story of a single mother from the big city who inherits an abandoned farmhouse in northern Canada. It was named by Kobo as “One of the Top 100 Most Popular Canadian Novels of All Time.”

My newest novel, Finding Flora, describes the adventures of a young Scottish woman who leaps from a moving train in 1905 to escape her abusive husband and claims her own homestead on the Alberta prairie. That will be published by Simon & Schuster in April 2025.

I’m also deeply invested in my monthly blog called Letters From Windermere, a digital letter that I email every month to my readers describing my love of all things vintage, as reflected in my research, travels and collections. I haven’t missed a letter in eleven years!

As for my personal life, two of our three adult daughters live in our town, along with their five young children. My husband and I are blessed to share our lives with them. Like Miss Marple, I love the unending parade of village life, and can’t imagine living anywhere else.

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The Long Version

For those of you who want to take a deep dive into someone else’s past (I am one of those people who loves all the background details), here’s a summary of my adventures in three countries and five provinces, from the farm to the city and back again to a small mountain town.

My Rural Roots

I was born and raised among the vast grain fields of the Canadian prairies, on a former Second World War airfield. This was my childhood home, and I still sleep here when I visit my family farm. Read more about that in my very first blog post: Growing Up With Air Force Ghosts.

My Journalism Career

After attending one of Canada’s last one-room country schools, I earned my English degree from the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon and landed my first reporting job at my hometown paper in North Battleford.

It was the tail end of the hot lead era, and from my desk I could see the linotype operator in his green eyeshade and ink-stained apron, raising his arms to shoulder height as he hammered the keys.

Author Elinor Florence began working at a weekly newspaper printed with hot lead type, as shown stacked in rows and hanging in a cabinet built for this purpose.

I wanted more education, so I drove 3,000 kilometres to Ottawa in my Chevette Scooter, and earned an honours journalism degree from Carleton University.

Note the manual typewriter on my desk.

Author Elinor Florence as a young woman, with short brown hair, seated at a desk before a manual typewriter, wearing a printed blouse and blazer, smiling as she holds her pencil in her fingers.

I then returned to my rural roots, working as an Agriculture Reporter for The Western Producer newspaper in Saskatoon.

It was a great job: I wore cowboy boots to work and dated a string of cute farm boys. I covered bull sales, rodeos and even the Calgary Stampede. This photo shows me at the Port of Vancouver grain terminal.

Author Elinor Florence pictured circa 1980 standing in an industrial area beside a railway track, wearing a denim jumper, a red turtleneck sweater, and a yellow hard hat, holding a 35-millimetre camera in one hand, a group of men in the background.

Still, I was longing for the bright lights. I packed my Chevy Vega and drove another 3,000 kilometres to Los Angeles, where I spent a year freelancing. I had a few small successes. I sold my column “Hollywood Happenings” to three weekly newspapers, including the Yellowknife News of the North in the Northwest Territories.

Eventually I ran out of money and started working at a one-hour photomat across the street from the famous Los Angeles Farmers Market. It was deadly dull, although I met a few minor celebrities. (And I once spotted Doris Day, trying on leather boots in a shoe store.)

Author Elinor Florence with long curly brown hair, circa 1978, leans on one elbow, pen in hand, gazing into distance while behind her is a yellow peg board filled with photography accessories.

But I really wanted to be a hard-hitting newspaper reporter, so I came home to Canada. My first venture into daily newspapers was at The Red Deer Advocate in Alberta. The newsroom staff was young and dedicated, and we put out a great paper. I started as the Agriculture Reporter and eventually became the newspaper’s first female City Editor.

I even rubbed shoulders with royalty (at least, I did have lunch in the same room as Princess Margaret).

A laminated name tag on a silver chain bears the royal crest of Princess Margaret, text explaining her visit to Saskatchewan and Alberta in 1980, with a photograph of a young smiling woman with dark curly hair and the words ELINOR FLORENCE, Red Deer, Advocate.

From there, I took my Volkswagen Scirocco for a 1,400-kilometre trek across the prairie to Manitoba, where I worked for an upstart tabloid called the Winnipeg Sun, notorious for its scantily clad Sunshine Girls. The newsroom was full of brilliant but odd characters – like the copy editor who lived in a motel and was paid in cash. I kept this issue with Canadian hockey star Wayne Gretzky’s wedding photo on the front page.

Front page of The Winnipeg Sun newspaper dated July 17, 1986 shows a large photograph of hockey star Wayne Gretzky in a black tuxedo smiling at the camera and giving a thumbs up, walking down the aisle with his bride on his arm, who is wearing a dress with high lace collar and a bouffant headdress.

I had always yearned to live on the West Coast, so I packed my Pontiac Grand LeMans and drove 2,300 kilometres west to Vancouver, where I lived in a beautiful seaside neighbourhood called Deep Cove and worked for the Province, another lively tabloid.

Scenic view of Deep Cove in North Vancouver lined with small boats, the smooth water reflecting the forested mountains in the background.

Our Mexican Adventure

In 1994 I left newspapers behind when I moved to Mexico for eighteen months with my husband and young children. My husband was contracted as the construction manager for a Canadian gold mining company.

We lived in a big, dusty northern city named Chihuahua, Chihuahua (I love saying that name), but spent much of our time in the remote Sierra Madre mountains where the mine was located. Sometimes we flew out to the mine in this tiny aircraft.

Aerial view taken from a small aircraft shows the rolling, rugged Sierra Madre Mountains in the state of Chihuahua, Mexico covered with green trees, and no signs of civilization.

Our Mountain Home

After returning to Canada, we decided to raise our kids in a small town, so we settled in the mountain resort of Invermere, British Columbia and built my dream home on the edge of town, next door to the wilderness, overlooking beautiful Lake Windermere.

I wanted to buy an old house but my husband wouldn’t hear of it, so I tried to make my new house look old instead. Read about my efforts here: Ten Ways to Make a New House Look Old.

Attractive two-storey house with blue siding and cream-coloured trim, three roof gables, and a stone foundation, with a stone path leading up to the front door through a green lawn surrounded by trees.

My lovely home office with a view of Lake Windermere is surrounded by the alpine forest, and deer often peek at me through the windows! Read more about my home office here: Home Office Love.

Office belonging to author Elinor Florence has a white leather office chair sitting at a white table, a large desktop computer on the table along with a black and white lamp and a vase with a red rose, facing a large window with a view of blue mountains and green forest and a glimpse of blue lake water.

Writing for Reader’s Digest

When I ran across a local guy whose propane truck had gone off a cliff, the words “Drama in Real Life” sprang to mind, and I fired off the story idea to Reader’s Digest. The editors published “Under the Death Cloud” and I became a regular contributor to the magazine for the next eight years.

My favourite assignments were the “heart” stories, as the Digest called them, like the one called “Bradley’s Last Hope,” about a little boy whose father gave him a liver transplant.

Two covers of Reader's Digest magazine, the top one featuring a photograph of a smiling man holding a blonde toddler with the headline "Bradley's Last Hope," written by author Elinor Florence.

Publishing My Own Newspaper

When an opportunity arose to purchase a fledgling weekly newspaper, I couldn’t resist the challenge. For the next six years I practically lived at the office, writing articles, selling classified advertisements over the counter, and sweeping the floor.

I had a winning business model because I know what local folks want to read about: their friends and neighbours. The Columbia Valley Pioneer thrived. We called it “The People Paper.” One man even proposed to his girlfriend on the front page.

Front page of newspaper with a masthead reading The Columbia Valley Pioneer and a large photo of a man with red hair and a beard holding a velvet ring box in both hands containing a diamond ring, and the headline "Lydia . . . will you marry me?"

My Debut Novel, Bird’s Eye View

I still hadn’t fulfilled my lifelong dream of writing fiction. My heart had always been captured by my mother’s tales of life on the home front, and my father’s stories about serving overseas in the air force, so I sold my newspaper and tackled my wartime novel.

My young heroine Rose works for Allied Intelligence, spying on the enemy from the sky by deciphering aerial photographs. I immersed myself in the Second World War period to the point where I went to bed each night braced for an air raid!

To my delight, Bird’s Eye View was published in 2014 and became a Canadian bestseller.

Vintage black and white wartime photograph of a young woman in uniform bending over a stereoscope studying an aerial photograph, while two handsome young airmen in Royal Canadian Air Force uniforms hover over her.

Lest We Forget

While researching my wartime novel, I interviewed people who lived through the Second World War, both on the home front and overseas, and uncovered some truly inspirational stories. They are published here on this website, categorized under the heading Lest We Forget. Please feel free to read, reflect, and share.

This is one of many veterans I interviewed, Jessie Lee Middleton. Read her story here: Nursing Sister Healed the Wounds of War.

Colored wartime photograph of smiling young woman, a member of the Royal Canadian Army Nursing Corps, seated in a hospital room, hands folded in her lap, the sunshine streaming over her, wearing a blue dress with brass buttons and a white pinafore apron, her hair covered with a white shoulder-length cowl.

My Second Novel, Wildwood

I drew on my own farming background for my second novel Wildwood, about a single mother from the big city who inherits an abandoned farmhouse in northern Alberta, and must learn the pioneer arts in order to survive — including cooking on a wood stove. It was named by Kobo as One of the Top 100 Most Popular Canadian Novels of All Times.

My fans loved it, too. Here I am with book fan Kim Schlieper of Victoria, B.C.

Author Elinor Florence, with long brown hair and glasses, wearing an orange cardigan, stands in a bookstore beside a large orange poster with the title Wildwood, beside another woman with short white hair and glasses holding two books in her hand, both smiling at the camera.

My New Novel, Finding Flora

My latest novel will be published by Simon & Schuster in April 2025. was inspired by my homesteading grandparents and my own Indigenous ancestors. Flora is a young Scottish woman who jumps from a moving train in 1905 to escape from her abusive husband and finds herself alone on the Alberta prairie. She decides the best way to disappear is to claim a homestead. She is helped in her quest by several other women, all of whom have their own struggles with a hostile government.

This photograph shows the style of clothes Flora would have worn. Read more here: What Homesteaders Wore.

Read a synopsis and find out how to preorder the book here: Finding Flora.

Letters From Windermere

My monthly blog titled Letters From Windermere is a monthly letter to my readers that reflects my love for people and their stories. My love of history and all things vintage is reflected in my novels, my collections, my travels, my home on Lake Windermere, and the monthly letter that I have been sending to my dear readers for the past eleven years.

Here’s a recent example: Queen Mary 2: Ten Things to Know.

Elinor Florence in coral waterproof jacket stands at the rail of the Queen Mary 2, the blue water churning out behind the ship, her clothing blowing in the wind, holding her hood on her head with one hand and smiling at the camera.

My Personal Life

I’ve been happily married for three decades to a mining construction manager. He works with a Canadian company that builds gold mines all over the world. I was lucky enough to accompany him to a few exotic locations, such as a mining camp on the windswept tundra of Far Eastern Russia. He still does some consulting work from home. He’s also a big help when it comes to lugging books around to events!

Sepia photograph of couple, he with moustache and wearing dark pants, leather jacket, white shirt and tie, his arm around his companion, she in flowered dress and sweater leaning against him and lifting one foot behind her into the air, both laughing.

Two of our adult daughters live right here in Invermere, and the third one lives in Calgary, Alberta, just three hours away.

We also have five grandchildren who live in our town. We love them dearly and see them almost every day. My husband and I are blessed to share our lives with them.

Five young children, three girls and two boys, wearing colorful jackets, stand in a row holding armfuls of golden leaves, smiling at the camera, against a backdrop of blue mountains and trees with red leaves.

My Friends Near and Far

I keep up a lively correspondence with all the lovely people who write to tell me they enjoy reading my books, subscribe to my blog, or visit me along the book trail.

Please email me, or write me an old-fashioned letter! I answer every message and letter. My contact information including my mailing address is here: Contact Elinor.

Handwritten letter dated April 25, 2024 and beginning with the words "Dear Elinor, Yesterday I finished one of the best or perhaps the best book of my life," beside a green greeting card bearing the words "You're Appreciated," both lying on tablecloth with pink polka dots.

Bestselling Historical Fiction Author