• Age: 14
• Grade: 9

This book is a lyrical testament to a great love affair between the writer and his region. In A Walk with the Rainy Sisters, one of British Columbia's favourite authors writes with passion about his favourite topic--the geography of British Columbia. Stephen Hume guides readers through the natural world, moving from the thin, cold air of British Columbia's high country to the fecundity and silence of the deep rainforest. He writes of the iridescence of dragonflies dancing out brief lives above summer ponds and the brittle forests of glass sponges growing in the lightless depths of the continental shelf, where they have flourished undisturbed since the Jurassic. Hume contemplates the meaning of rain; the tawny islets in the Salish Sea; what the night sky tells us about our place in time; people who choose to live at the margins and the relentless passage of lives and seasons, loss and renewal.

"What Hume has forgotten about this province is more than most journalists will ever know," wrote Terry Glavin. Roberta Morris wrote, "He unburies language." A Walk with the Rainy Sisters invites readers once again to share the author's love and awe of this province.

Stephen Hume was raised in fishing, farming and logging communities across Alberta and BC and studied at the University of Victoria. A journalist for over 35 years, Hume was editor-in-chief at the Edmonton Journal before moving to BC to become columnist and feature writer for the Vancouver Sun. He has won more than a dozen awards for his poetry, essays and journalism, including the Writers Guild of Alberta Literary Award, the Southam President's Award and the Marjorie Nichols Memorial Award. Stephen became the first Canadian to win the Dolly Connelly prize for environmental writing. His other books include Raincoast Chronicles 20: Lilies and Fireweed, Bush Telegraph and Off the Map, which was shortlisted for a Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Book Prize. He currently teaches professional writing at the University of Victoria.

Stephen Hume's profile page

• Short-listed, The City of Victoria Butler Book Prize

"The many facets of the brilliant historian, journalist, and essayist, Stephen Hume, come together in in this evocative book about the places and peoples of the West Coast. Both serenity and peace echo in the weathers of these island pages. A Walk with the Rainy Sisters, is Hume at his most personal, the intimacies and reflections gathered here worth all our attention. He is one of the best writers we have in this country."

- Patrick Lane

"Reading Stephen Hume is like walking the beach at low tide with a knowing and lyrical guide: what was hidden is revealed anew. Each stone turned is an exploration of place, history and possibility - in prose that's highly personal and uniquely British Columbian. He makes us love this land at the edge of the world even more."

- Mark Forsythe

Praise from Patrick Lane

A Walk With the Rainy Sisters: In Praise of British Columbia's Places