Book Review: Finding Flora by Elinor Florence
As a Metis reader, normally I wouldn’t touch “Western” or “Settler” narratives with a ten-foot pole. The risk of being confronted by racist stereotypes or unexamined regurgitations of colonial “history” when I’m looking for something relaxing to read just isn’t worth it. For Finding Flora, the latest novel by Elinor Florence, I made a worthwhile exception.
A Metis author, originally from Saskatchewan, Florence started her career as a journalist, working for papers like the Red Deer Advocate and the Winnipeg Sun, later contributing regularly to the Reader’s Digest, and eventually buying and running a paper of her own in Invermere, BC. Since retiring from journalism, Florence has dedicated her time to a lifelong dream, writing fiction. Finding Flora is her third novel.
The story follows Flora, a young Scottish woman trying to make a better life for herself. After marrying a CPR land agent and moving with him to Canada, where he intends to make his fortune, she realizes, far too late, that he’s not the man she believed him to be. Desperate to escape his cruel ambitions, she throws herself from a moving train…
