Northern Alberta-set novel tells of a bequest of an abandoned, off-the-grid farmhouse (that must be lived in for a year before it can be sold). Who doesn’t like a challenge?!? It’s “a sweet, easy to digest summer novel about coming to understand your own ancestral history,” in our writer’s view. —Kenna Clifford reviews Wildwood, by Elinor Florence (Toronto: Simon & Schuster Canada, 2026) $25.99 / 9781668227619
“Keeping the Books is a family history par excellence, the best of its genre that I have read, which traces the life of Alene Peck, a homesteader’s daughter in the Peace River district of British Columbia. It was a colourful life that Alene has chronicled and saved through a trove of letters, notes, and photographs that upon her death were bequeathed to her son, Ross Peck, who lives today in Skookumchuck, in BC’s Kootenays.” Kenneth Favrholdt reviews Keeping the Books: The life and times of a Peace River Homesteader’s Daughter, by Ross Peck (Cranbrook: Wild Horse Creek Press, 2025) $21.95 / 9781069794703