Elinor Florence grew up on a Saskatchewan farm and earned degrees in English and journalism. She is the author of three historical fiction novels, including her newest, Finding Flora. She is Métis and lives in Invermere, British Columbia.
In Finding Flora, set in 1905 Alberta, Flora Craigie jumps from a moving train into the wilderness to escape a disastrous marriage. She has to create a new life for herself on the unforgiving prairie, while trying to overcome systemic sexism and her past. Finding Flora is meticulously researched and shines a light on women homesteaders, a group overlooked by history despite their courage and strength. This novel brings an under-examined slice of Canadian history to life through strongwilled and full-bodied characters.
Interview by Alli Vail
Alli Vail (AV): You’re appearing in the VFA historical fiction themed event — and this is your third historical fiction. What keeps drawing you to historical fiction?
Elinor Florence: I was raised in a family that talks about the past as if it happened yesterday, and gets discussed at every meal! My own heritage has deep roots in this country’s history dating back to the late 1700s, including Cree women, Scottish fur traders, English homesteaders, and even a North-West Mounted Police officer. Almost everyone in my family has a deep and abiding love of the land, and I still own farmland in Saskatchewan that is farmed by my brother. While reading and learning about history, it did not escape my notice that history books are primarily written by men, so my novels interpret history from a female perspective.
AV: How do you balance historical fact and characters (like Minister of the Interior, Frank Oliver) with the needs of the story when you’re writing in this genre?
EF: I write my novels in such a way that my fictional characters are walking through true and authentic history. Although the incidents and the dialogue involving real characters such as Frank Oliver, Alix Westhead, Irene Parlby, and William Van Horne are fabricated, I try to remain true to the essential nature of these people. I believe they could have and would have acted in the ways they did under the circumstances, based on my research.
AV: Finding Flora includes so many powerful details like the types of potatoes Flora plants, to how her little cabin is built — was there anything in your research that really surprised you about the things homesteaders had to go through?
EF: I knew that homesteading life was hard, but I was shocked by just how terribly dangerous it was. From the extreme cold to the threat of starvation, the illnesses and accidents when no medical help was available, prairie fires, and even the constant challenge to one’s mental health resulting from the isolation and the grinding poverty — life literally hung in the balance on a daily basis. It was a far cry from the pretty picture painted by the Little House on the Prairie television series.
AV: This book centres around five main women characters with distinct and rich personalities and backstory — what inspired them, and what was it like developing them for this book?
EF: All five women have roots firmly grounded in reality. The Chicken Ladies were modelled after a pair of women who existed in real life, raising poultry near the village of Alix, Alberta. Jessie McDonald was inspired by a Métis woman who trained horses for a living near my current home in the Lake Windermere valley of British Columbia. Peggy Penrose sprang from my imagination after reading numerous accounts of widows who left their homes because they were determined to give their children a better future. And Flora was inspired by every immigrant woman who arrived on the Canadian prairie completely unskilled and uninformed about the hardships ahead, whose courage and tenacity laid the foundation for the Western Canada that we know and love today.
AV: Flora and the other women experience not just hardship from weather and circumstance, but they get a lot of trouble from the men in the book. In particular, Mr. Payne, who might be the most heinous man I’ve encountered in a book in recent history. He’s the worst. How does modern sexism and misogyny play into some of the ways you explored these topics in the book?
EF: Sexism and misogyny has always existed and will always exist in some form, but women in history had far fewer legal protections than they have today. In the early 1900s, when my novel takes place, Canadian women did not have the vote — which of course meant that they could not hold elected office. Flora and the other women were effectively second class citizens with no influence over their own lives. When they married, their money and possessions belonged to their husbands. If they were full and equal partners in a homestead, their names would never appear on the land title. They could not accuse their husbands of battery. And if they chose to leave their husbands, they could not claim financial support. Single women were not allowed to claim a free homestead, since the government wanted them to marry and bear children instead. All of these factors are highlighted in my novel — but at the same time, several male characters in my book sympathize with and support the women in their quest for equality, so change was in the air. I had a comment from a male reader, who said: “Thank you for not making all the men in your book out to be jerks!”
AV: What do you think readers can learn or take away from historical fiction?
EF: Life is one long educational experience, and people who study the past are better informed about the present and the future because they have a grasp of mistakes that should never be repeated. History can be uplifting, because it shows how far we have advanced in some respects, and impresses upon us the sacrifices of those who came before us. It is also humbling because it demonstrates how much progress is yet to be made, and reminds us that we should always strive to leave the world better than we found it. Finally, truth is indeed stranger than fiction, and history is highly entertaining!